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The person charging this material is re- 
sponsible for its return on or before the 
Latest Date stamped below. 


Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books 
are reasons for disciplinary action and may 
result in dismissal from the University. 


UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 


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mint A 6 aah 
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APR 3.0 [1988 
acT 6 +2002 
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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2021 with funding from 
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httos://archive.org/details/artinpaintingOObarn_ 4 


JHE ARGGEN: PAINTING 


PUBLICATIONS OF THE 
BARNES FOUNDATION PRESS 


AN APPROACH TO ART 
MARY MULLEN 


THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE 
LAURENCE BUERMEYER 


THE ART IN PAINTING 
ALBERT C. BARNES 


THE Uibhagy 


7 
is 


vce OF THE 








Cézanne Barnes Foundation 


THE ART IN PAINTING 


BY 


ae tao Cen AL NDEs 


ONE HUNDRED AND SIX ILLUSTRATIONS 


THE BARNES FOUNDATION PRESS 
MERION, Pa., U.S.A. 
1925 









Copyright, 1925, by, ial nee 
THE BARNES FOUNDATION in 


, 
* ‘ 


y 


‘ 


Be — 


TO 


JOHN DEWEY 


WHOSE CONCEPTIONS 
OF EXPERIENCE, OF METHOD, OF EDUCATION, 
INSPIRED THE WORK OF WHICH 


THIS BOOK IS A PART 


5645299 


assis ree a 


Ji i 
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Per BARING OU N DA el: ON 


AN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION 
Chartered, December 4, 1922 


BOARD OF DIRECTORS 


JOSEPH LAPSLEY WILSON 
BUBERE GC. BARNES. 
LAURA L. BARNES 

N. E. MULLEN . 

MARY MULLEN 


Director of Arboretum 
President 

Vice-President 

Secretary and Treasurer 
Associate Director of Education 





JOHN DEWEY . 


LAURENCE BUERMEYER . 


THOMAS MUNRO . 


Director of Education 
Associate Director of Education 
Associate Director of Education 





L. V. GEIGER 
PAUL GUILLAUME 


JOHN W. PRINCE. ; 
THOMAS H. STEVENSON 
ALBERT NULTY 


Recording Secretary 
Foreign Secretary 


Curator of Arboretum 
Curator of Paintings 
Associate Curator of Paintings 














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TuIs book represents an effort to set forth briefly the salient 
features of a systematic study of both old and modern paintings. 
The experience has developed a method that has been in use for 
more than ten years, with results so encouraging that a plan 
embodying it has been installed as a part of the course in Fine 
Arts at the University of Pennsylvania. 

The method comprises the observation of facts, reflection upon 
them, and the testing of the conclusions by their success in 
application. It stipulates that an understanding and appre- 
ciation of paintings is an experience that can come only from con- 
tact with the paintings themselves. It emphasizes the fact that 
the terms “understanding,” ‘‘appreciation,’’ ‘‘art,’’ ‘‘interest,”’ 
“experience,” have precise meanings that are inseparable parts 
of the method. It offers something basically objective to replace 
the sentimentalism, the antiquarianism, sheltered under the 
cloak of academic prestige, which make futile the present courses 
in art in universities and colleges generally. 

From the earliest times down to our own age, the traditions 
of painting, like those of science, have been in a constant state 
of evolution, and their determinants have always been the 
prevailing conditions of culture. The arid periods in history 
were characterized always by slavish imitation of previous 
traditions which, in their own age, were living embodiments of 
human values. The aridity disappeared, and the traditions 
were modified, when greater men recognized that the vitality of 
a custom consists precisely in its representing the spirit of its age. 
No tradition has ever persisted unchanged and no sound tradi- 
tion has ever completely disappeared; these facts admit of no 


See a | 


x PREFACE 


question in the history of painting. The traditions of previous 
ages have always been the foundation stones upon which new 
developments are based, even though that truth has been gen- 
erally unrecognized at the time. Important creators have 
usually suffered grievous wrongs through the blindness of their 
contemporaries, and our own age is living up to that historical 
record. A person who professes to understand and appreciate 
Titian and Michel Angelo and who fails to recognize the same 
traditions in the moderns, Renoir and Cézanne, is practicing 
self-deception. Similarly, an understanding of early Oriental 
art and of El Greco carries with it an appreciation of the con- 
temporary work of Matisse and Picasso. These modern and 
contemporary painters have merely added contributions of 
their own, just as Titian and Michel Angelo, El Greco and the 
Orientals, founded their work upon the traditions of their 
predecessors. 

In this book an effort is made to trace in the history of 
painting the essential continuity of the great traditions and to 
show that the best of the modern painters use the same means, 
to the same general ends, as did the great Florentines, Venetians, 
Dutchmen and Spaniards. To show that continuity, it has 
been necessary to analyze the plastic forms of the principal 
painters from the dawn of the Italian Renaissance down to the 
present day. Historical data are treated as merely incidental: 
no attempt has been made to present a complete summary of 
the history of painting, although no important movement and 
no really first-class artist has been entirely left out of account 
in the general evaluations. 

The summaries of characteristics of the work of the artists 
treated, and the analyses of the particular paintings mentioned, 
are compiled exclusively from my own observations recorded in 
notes made in front of the paintings themselves. It is not 
expected that either the analyses or the discussions will do more 
than supplement a systematic study of the actual works men- 


PREFACE xi 


tioned. The object in incorporating the analyses in the book is 
to enable persons who have the opportunity, to learn the method 
of approach and to test its value with the objective facts in 
front of them. Nothing is more futile than to discuss a paint- 
ing without at the same time looking at it. The reasons why 
photographs, colored prints and lantern slides, no matter how 
well expounded, fail in their intended purpose, are stated in the 
chapter ‘‘Form and Matter.” 

It is not assumed that the conclusions reached with regard to 
particular paintings are the only ones compatible with the use 
of the method: any one of them is of course subject to revision. 
What is claimed is that the method gives results as objective 
as possible within any field of aesthetic experience and that it 
reduces to a minimum the role of merely personal and arbitrary 
preference. Preference will always remain, but its existence is 
consistent with a much higher degree of objective judgment than 
at present prevails. Our intention is to offer a type of analysis 
which should lead to the elimination of the prevailing habit of 
judging paintings by either academic rules or emotional irrele- 
vancy. In other words, this book is an experiment in the 
adaptation to plastic art of the principles of scientific method. 

As far as I know, the plan as a whole is new. The technique, 
in its general psychological and logical aspects, is derived from 
Dewey’s monumental work in the development of scientific 
method. For the underlying principles of the psychology of 
aesthetics I owe much to Santayana and to my associate, 
Laurence Buermeyer. To Mr. Buermeyer I am indebted also 
for his fine services in bringing into orderly arrangement my 
scattered notes relating to the paintings in the galleries of 
Europe and in our own collection. My other associates, Mary 
Mullen, N. E. Mullen and L. V. Geiger, have also rendered 
much valuable service in connection with the book and the 


educational plan out of which it grew. 
ALBERT C. BARNES. 
MERION, Pa., January, 1925. 


‘ 


Da ahi 


A Catt 


Le 





CONTENTS 





Boox I 
INTRODUCTION 


CHAPTER 
I, THE PROBLEM OF APPRECIATION . 
II. THE Roots or ArT. 
III, THE PARTICULAR ARTS. 
IV. THE AESTHETIC VALUES OF ac 
I, ART AND SUBJECT MATTER 
II. THE NATURE OF ForM 
III. Form AND TECHNIQUE 
IV. PLASTIC AND OTHER VALUES . 
V. Form AND MATTER 
VI. PLAstic ART AND  aatencune 
VII. QUALITY IN PAINTING . 
V. ART AND MYSTICISM 
VI. SUMMARY 


Book II 
THE ELEMENTS OF PAINTING 


FOREWORD. THE RAw MATERIALS OF PAINTING 
CHAPTER 
I, PLAstic Form : 
II. PLAstic FoRM AND Sanya Marre 
III. Cotor 
IV. DRAWING 
V. COMPOSITION 


Boox III 
THE TRADITIONS OF PAINTING 


CHAPTER 
I. THE DAWN oF MODERN PAINTING 
II. THE FLORENTINE TRADITION . 
III. THE VENETIAN TRADITION 
IV. PAINTING SUBSEQUENT TO THE VENETIAN 


PAGE 


24 
28 
34 
34 
37 
40 
44 
55 
61 
65 
638 
71 


PAGE 


AL 


19 
96 
106 
115 
126 


PAGE 
139 
148 
AZ 
185 


X1V CONRENDS 
CHAPTER 
V. THE FLEMISH TRADITION . ‘ : 
VI. FRENCH PAINTING BETWEEN POUSEIN. AND ayer : 
VII. THE SPANISH RENAISSANCE 
VIII. REMBRANDT AND HIs SUCCESSORS 
IX. PORTRAITURE 
X. GOYA. : 
XI. FRENCH PNaiAG OF THE Rarer oka : 
XII. LANDSCAPE 
Book IV 
MODERN PAINTING 
CHAPTER 
I. THE TRANSITION TO MODERN PAINTING 
II. IMPRESSIONISM . 
III. MANET 
IV. RENOIR 
V. DEGAS 
VI. C&ZANNE ‘ : 
VII. Puvis DE eee re eas 4 
VIII. THE Post IMPRESSIONISTS 
IX. THE IMPRESSIONIST TRADITION IN Naa 
X. THE MANET TRADITION IN AMERICA . 
Book V 
CONTEMPORARY PAINTING 
CHAPTER 
I. THE TRANSITION TO CONTEMPORARY PAINTING 
II, CONTEMPORARY PAINTING . 
III. MATISSE . 
IV. Picasso 
V. SOUTINE . 
VI. PASCIN 
VII. MopiIGcLiaAnlI . 
VIII. OTHER CONPORRET RS 


APPENDIX 


1. METHOD AND DESIGN 

2. ACADEMIC ART CRITICISM 
3. ANALYSES OF PAINTINGS . 
4, LisT OF PAINTINGS 


PAGE 
188 
196 
199 
205 
208 
216 
220 
226 


PAGE 
241 
250 
261 
265 
272 
Zi 
281 
283 
291 
300 


PAGE 
307 
312 
316 
325 
334 
343 
346 
349 


367 
372 
383 
513 


eo) Heal Io Sa ehe AGT OIN S 


CEZANNE, ‘‘La Femme au Chapeau Vert” 

Chinese, Fourteenth Century, ‘‘Landscape”’ 

Masaccio, ‘St. Peter Taking Money from Fish’s Mouth” 
REMBRANDT, “‘ The Unmerciful Servant”’ 

CEZANNE, ‘“‘ Landscape” 

ANDREA DEL CASTAGNO, ‘‘ The Thaet Sunneey 


PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA (School), ‘‘ Marriage of St. ea erinca 


Picasso, ‘‘ The Acrobats”’ 

CouRBET, ‘‘Head”’ , 

TiTIAN, ‘‘ The Entombment’”’ 

CEZANNE, “‘Still-Life’”’ : 

TINTORETTO, ‘‘The Origin of the Milky Way” 
PAOLo VERONESE, ‘‘Flight from Sodom”’ 

Greek Statue, 400 B.c. 

Greek Vase, 500 B.c. nae 

Ext Greco, ‘‘Christ Bafoué”’ . 

Picasso, ‘‘Composition”’ 

TouLousE-LAuTREC, ‘‘Figure”’ 

REnorr, ‘‘The Embroiderers”’ t 

Poussin, ‘‘The Arcadian Shepherds” 

BoucHeER, ‘‘La Bergére Endormie”’ 

CHARDIN, ‘‘ Ustensiles Variés”’ ; 
MARGARITONE, Painting in the Hee ntine Style 
CIMABUE, ‘‘The Virgin Enthroned”’ . 

Florentine, Fourteenth Century Triptych 

ANDREA DEL CASTAGNO (School), ‘St. Eustasius”’ 
PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA, “‘ Reception by Solomon”’ 
Fra Fixipro Liprt, ‘“ Virgin Adoring Child”’ 
RoussEAvu (LE DovuANIER), ‘Figure in Landscape”’ 
UccELLO, ‘‘The Rout of San Romano”’ . 
TINTORETTO, ‘‘ Crucifixion” : 
Masaccio, ‘‘Adam and Eve Fereciics feces Pare 
DavumIeER, ‘‘Porteur d’Eau”’ 

FRAGONARD, ‘‘ Bathers”’ 

ReEnorr, ‘‘Bathers”’ : 

RuBENsS, ‘‘The Judgment of Baca 


FRONTISPIECE 
45 
46 
47 
48 
85 
86 
87 
88 — 
97 
97 
98 
99 

100 
117 
118 
119 
120 
129 
130— 
ASi i> 
1327 
141 
142 
143 
144 
153 
154 
155 
156 
177 
178 
179 
180 — 
180: 
189 


Xvi LIST? OPGILU DUST RAD DO ps 


GIORGIONE, ‘‘Concert Champétre”’ 
MAURICE PRENDERGAST, Fee ate with Pineas 
Matisse, ‘‘ Joie de Vivre” : 
VELASQUEZ, ‘‘Infanta Marguerita’”’ 
REMBRANDT, ‘‘Hendrickje Stoffels” . 
Goya, ‘‘Dr. Galos”’ 

VELASQUEZ, ‘‘Don Baltasar Carlee in ihe Riding choot 
~ CLAUDE LORRAIN, Prseaiegsry 

Corot, ‘‘Landscape”’ 

CONSTABLE, ‘‘The Hay Wyaiait 

REnorr, ‘‘Landscape”’ 

CEZANNE, ‘‘Landscape”’ 

Cosimo TurA, “‘St. Jerome” 
POLLAIUOLO, ‘‘ Apollo and Daphne” 
Greek bas-relief, 400 B.c. 

MIcHEL ANGELO, ‘‘ Expulsion from Bden® 
DELACcROIX, ‘‘Le Triomphe de St. Michel” 
CEZANNE, ‘‘ Bathers”’ , 
ROUAULT, ‘‘ Figures” 

Monet, ‘‘ Madame Monet erproderie 
VERMEER, ‘‘The Lace-Maker” . 
Renoir, ‘‘'The Cup of Chocolate” 
Deaas, “‘ Dancers’”’ 

VAN Goa, ‘“‘Landscape”’ 

MANET, ‘‘ Boy with the Fife’’ ‘ 
MopiciiAnl, ‘‘The Red-headed Girl”’ 
Gauculin, ‘Tahitian Landscape”’ 
SISLEY, ‘‘Landscape”’ 

Lawson, ‘‘Landscape”’ 

GLACKENS, ‘‘ The Race Track” 
GLACKENS, ‘‘Girl with Green Turban” 
Negro Statue, Sixteenth Century 
Egyptian Statue, 2000 B.c. 

Persian Miniature, Sixteenth Conte 
MatissE, ‘‘La Legon de Musique”’ 
Hindu Statue, Third Century 

Matisse, ‘‘Nude”’ . 

Italian Primitive, F ifeeentht Canney 

~ FRAGONARD, ‘‘ The Music Lesson” 
Picasso, ‘‘Girl with Cigarette’’ 

Picasso, “‘Still-Life”’ 

SOUTINE, ‘‘Flowers”’ 

Egyptian (Ptolemaic) Bas- ratiae 300. B.C. 
SOUTINE, ‘‘Figure”’ Shia Tae ae 
SOUTINE, “Figure”’ 


190 
191 
192 
209 
210 
Zit 
212 
233 
233 
234 
235 
236 
245 
245 
246 
246 
247 
247 
248 
257 
258 
259 
260 
285 
286 
287 
288 
293 
294 
295 
296 
317 
317 
318 
319 
320 
320 
329 
330 
331 
332 
337 
338 
339 
340 


Seabee be Sl RAIL LON:S 


Pascin, ‘‘Landscape”’ 

Currico, ‘‘Fantasy’”’ 

UTRILLO, ‘‘ Landscape” 

SEGONZAC, ‘‘Landscape”’ 

Lotrron, ‘‘ Harvesters’’ é 
Chinese Portrait, Twelfth Gentire , 
DemutTH, ‘‘Landscape”’ 

KisLinG, “Nude” . 

GrorGio, ‘‘ Rape of Riropaa 
BoTricELLI, ‘‘ Birth of Venus”’ 
GroTTo, ‘‘St. Francis Restores His Aarerel to He Father! 


Grotto, ‘‘Joseph and Mary Returning after Their Marriage”’ 


CEZANNE, ‘‘ Madame Cézanne”’ 

SIGNORELLI, ‘‘ Moses as a Law-giver”’ 

GIOVANNI BELLINI, ‘‘ Madonna of the Atbereetin 
RAPHAEL, ‘‘La Belle Jardiniére”’ . 

Cosimo RossELLI, ‘‘ Pharaoh’s Bectrncuont: in the Red Sea’? 
GIORGIONE, ‘‘ Madonna with St. George and St. Francis” 
RAPHAEL, ‘‘ The Transfiguration”’ 

TITIAN, ‘“‘The Assumption” 

CRANACH, “‘Eve”’ 

ROUSSEAU (LE Doge ‘F mata : 

PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA, ‘‘Exaltation of the eenet 
CHARLES PRENDERGAST, Wood Panel 

Manet, ‘‘Tarring the Boat” 


XV1l 


353 
354 
355 
356 
361 
362 
363 
364 
385 
385 
386 
387 
388 
413 
414 
415 
416 
425 
426 
427 
428 
465 
466 
467 
468 







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BOOK I 
INTRODUCTION 


Pn Ped INT ET 





1204 I 


Peri beA Ry ENG RP ATN LING 


CHAPTER I 


THE PROBLEM OF APPRECIATION 


THE object of this book is to endeavor to correlate in the 
simplest possible form the main principles that underlie the intel- 
ligent appreciation of the paintings of all periods of time. We 
shall seek to show, briefly, what is involved in aesthetic experi- 
ence in general; after that, to give an account of the principles 
by which painting may be judged and so intelligently enjoyed; 
finally, to illustrate those principles by applying them to par- 
ticular painters and tendencies in painting. 

The approach to the problem of appreciation of art is made 
difficult by the unconscious habits and preconceptions which 
come to us from contact with a society which is but little inter- 
ested in art. When other interests, such as those of a practical, 
sentimental or moral nature, directly affect the aesthetic interest, 
they are more likely than not to lead it astray, and the result 
is what may be called a confusion of values. Before trying to 
tell what the proper excellence in a painting is, we must make 
clear what it undeniably is not. 

We miss the function of a painting if we look to it for either 
literal reproduction of subject-matter or information of a docu- 
mentary character. Mere imitation knows nothing of what is 
essential or characteristic, and documentary information is 
equally far afield. The camera records physical characteristics 
but can show nothing of what is beneath the surface. We ask 
of a work of art that it reveal to us what is profound, what signifi- 
cant qualities in objects and situations have the power to move 
us aesthetically. The artist must open our eyes to what unaided 
we could not see. In order to do that, the painter often needs 
to modify the familiar appearance of things and so make some- 
thing which is, in the photographic sense, a bad likeness. All 


22 IN TROD UGT ION 


we can ask of a painter is whether, for example, in a landscape, 
he has caught the spirit of the scene; in a portrait, if he has dis- 
covered what is essential or characteristic of the sitter. And 
these are obviously matters for judgment, not for photographic 
reproduction or documentary cataloguing. Another popular 
misconception is that a painter is expected to tell a story and is 
to be judged by his ability to make the story edifying or enter- 
taining. This is not unnatural, since we are interested in real 
things because they play a part in the story which is life. A real 
work of art may, incidentally, tell a story, but error arises when 
we try to judge it by the narrative, or the moral pointed, instead 
of by the manner in which the artist has used his materials—color, 
line, space—to produce a work of plastic art; when, in other 
words, a literary or moral value has been mistaken for a plastic 
value. 

Another error scarcely less destructive to genuine aesthetic 
appreciation is that which mistakes technical proficiency for 
artistic significance. Art is not only an expression of the artist’s 
creative spirit, but also a kind of handicraft, a skill in employ- 
ing a special technique. As in other handicrafts, some natural 
ability combined with instruction and practice may enable a 
person to handle a paint-brush; but it is certain that there are 
hundreds of capable craftsmen in paint for one real artist. It 
is not especially difficult to learn to recognize the devices, “‘the 
tricks of the trade,’ by which great painters secured their effects; 
but it zs difficult to recognize greatness in these effects, to dis- 
tinguish between professional competence and artistic genius. 
To look merely for professional competence in painting is aca- 
demicism; it is to mistake the husk for the kernel, the shadow 
for the substance. 

This error is really more serious than that of confusing photo- 
graphic likeness or story-telling with art values, because the 
novice usually knows that he is a novice and is willing to learn, 
but the academician supposes himself to have learned already, 
and his mind is usually closed to the existence of anything but 
technique. With his eyes fixed upon the forms in which the liv- 
ing spirit of the past has embodied itself, he neglects the contem- 
porary manifestations of that spirit, and often refuses to see or 
acknowledge them when they are pointed out to him. This is 
the reason why the most formidable enemy of new movements 
in art has always been, not the indifferent public, but the hostile 


eh Pk OB LEM, OF pee aot! 23 
ay Fa Le ~ 

academician. The public does not ie “ay what he says 
applies only to technique, and not to art itself, and is corres- 
pondingly impressed. His motive need not, of course, be a 
conscious motive, and doubtless often is not. The mere fact of 
novelty, to one who has systematically addressed himself to the 
old and familiar things, is an irritation. It challenges precious 
habits, it threatens to overturn judgments with which the aca- 
demician has identified himself, and which are in consequence 
dear to him. Pride joins hands with natural human inertia to 
oppose what is living in the interest of what is dead. 

What we have said so far is almost purely negative and the 
result is likely to be bewilderment. The positive phase of the 
problem is that of the formation of a set of new habits which 
would develop the attitude of searching in the painting for 
what is of value im itself, avoiding the extraneous matters 
above discussed. The problem of seeing and the problem of 
judging, however, are ultimately but one; that is, we learn to 
see what a picture is, by learning what it ought to be. Con- 
sequently, a statement of the standard by which plastic art is 
to be judged is also a statement of the method by which it is 
to be observed. 


CHAP RE REL 


THE ROOTS OF ART 


In order to indicate the attitude, the point of view, from 
which works of art must be approached, if their specifically 
aesthetic quality is to be perceived, a brief statement of psy- 
chological fundamentals is necessary. 

Everything that human beings do is ultimately dependent 
upon the feelings that things and acts awaken in them. There 
are pleasant experiences and unpleasant, and we all seek the 
pleasant and avoid the unpleasant. This is a tendency which 
needs no justification. Human beings are so constituted as to 
have preferences, and in the last analysis these preferences are 
something behind which we cannot go. Our feelings, if not 
irrational, are at least non-rational. In the long run, every- 
thing that we do is done for the sake of some experience intrinsi- 
cally enjoyable, and even when we are compelled to accept pain 
and privation, we do so for the sake of a positive value which 
outweighs their unpleasantness. 

To say that an experience is of positive value, that it is worth 
having for its own sake, is to say that in it an instinctive prompt- 
ing finds fulfillment.* To eat when we are hungry, to turn 
away from what disgusts us, to be victorious when our will is 
pitted against that of another, are things good in their own 
right; they are satisfactions of instincts and are enjoyed imme- 
diately, for their own sake. Of course, the enjoyment is greater 
when what is desired satisfies more than one instinct. Victory 
means the immediate experience of triumph; it may also mean 
the accomplishment of remoter ends which have an instinctive 
appeal of their own; and the confluence of these separate satis- 
factions heightens our enjoyment in the experience of victory. 
In general, the ideal is approached as our emotions are harmon- 
iously united in every act. Then every experience gains value 
from all the resources of our nature, and suffers loss from no 


* Mary Mullen, ‘‘An Approach to Art,” pp. 13, 14. 


ees O.O2n S370 EF eA RT 25 


sense of desire thwarted or damage done to any of the interests 
which we have at heart. 

The enjoyment of art is one of the experiences which are 
desirable for their own sake. It is, of course, capable of acquir- 
ing other values also. It may enable us to make a living; it 
may improve our morals or quicken our religious faith; but if 
we attempt to judge a work of art directly by its contribution to 
these ends, we have abandoned the track. A work of art pre- 
sents to the spectator an opportunity to live through an experi- 
ence which by its own quality vouches for its right to existence, 
and whatever other value it has depends upon this value. If 
it lacks this, it is a counterfeit. 

Art, in other words, is one of the ways in which instinct finds 
satisfaction. It is not the ordinary way of instinctive satis- 
faction, however, since picture, statue, or musical composition 
prompts us to no course of practical action. ‘ Our response to 
art takes the form of understanding, entering into the spirit of 
it, awakening in ourselves, in varying degreés, the experience of 
the artist. This involves effort and entails fatigue; work is 
done, the process is active and not passive; but the action does 
not, directly, produce effects in the real world. Hence art is 
satisfaction of instincts, but with a marked difference; and our 
next problem is to see what this difference is. 

The word most important at this point is ‘‘interest.’’ ‘“‘In- 
terest’’ implies concern, not with ourselves, but with objec- 
tive things, and concern which is permanent. A real interest 
is an identification of ourselves with something which is real 
independently of us, as when we speak of interest in music, 
in the work of Beethoven, or in another individual. It is, 
furthermore, comparatively enduring. Its essential character- 
istic is that it induces him who has it to take pains, to make 
efforts, and so to order his activities that the object of his interest 
takes form in his mind and becomes the propelling force of his 
activities. Persistence of effort is the indispensable condition 
of real interest. When this is lacking, we say that a professed 
interest is a sham or at least a delusion. A man who believes 
that he is interested in paintings, but who takes no pains to 
acquaint himself with the problems to be solved, who will not 
study the methods of presentation proposed, form some judg- 
ment through actual experience of their adequacy, is a mere 
dilettante. 


SETS, 


26 INTRODUCTION 


That in which we have no real interest passes before our eyes 
without entering the range of our attention or leaving any traces 
in our memory. What has value for us—and this is an alterna- 
tive expression for ‘‘what interests us’’—is attended to in detail, 
and remembered. In general, the object of an interest has 
distinctness in its parts and coherence as a whole, and in con- 
sequence it arouses a specific emotion, appropriate to it as an 
individual thing, and not a mere mood, a vague, undistinguished 
sense of exhilaration, languor, lachrymosity, ineffability, or what 
not. One who goes to a symphony orchestra concert to pass 
the time, or for social reasons, comes away with only the haziest 
ideas of what was played. But for one with a genuine interest 
in music, the concert means a series of intricate relationships 
between chords, melodies and movements, all woven into a uni- 
fied whole which reveals the spirit of the composer. In other 
words, art is an expression of interest, and that interest depends 
upon the sensibility which makes us alive in the real world to 
things that to one not sensitive would not exist. 

The foregoing statements indicate that instincts become effec- 
tive realities only as they become organized interests. Such 
interests centre about and develop real things; they also make 
up the individual self. The self is shadowy, insubstantial, futile, 
except in so far as it has objective interests; but it is also true 
that the objective world is a conglomeration of meaningless facts 
except as it is organized by the interests of living beings. The 
artist does what no camera, no mere imitation, no mere docu- 
ment, can do, namely, selects aspects for emphasis and gives 


significant order; that is, his work is acreation. But it is appeal 


to feeling that confers significance and establishes a principle by 
which the essential can be distinguished from the trivial or 
irrelevant. Things are important not in themselves but by 
virtue of their relation to feeling or interest, and since men differ 
in their interests, no single set of things or qualities in the real 
world is important in general or without qualification. A con- 
flagration interests various people differently: to the chemist 
it means, chiefly, a process of oxidation; to an owner, it may 
mean loss of money; to an artist, it means line, color, mass, in a 
series of relationships which he enjoys. 

So to draw out and make clear the true character of anything 
is the task of the artist. Feeling is involved, since what is 
brought out depends upon the individual and his interests; and 


helt te Os Sy OR eA ReaD 27 


the satisfaction which instinct finds in comprehension, in imag- 
inative realization, is one which is intrinsic to the process of 
bringing out, not something added afterwards: the person who 
comprehends and appreciates the work of art shares the emo- 
tions which prompted the artist to create. The artist gives us 
satisfaction by seeing for us more clearly than we could see for 
ourselves, and showing us what an experience more sensitive 
and profound than our own has shown him. 

We all take some pleasure in seeing how things look, in observ- 
ing their color, their contour, their movement, whether they 
are moving in our direction or not. In so far as we are success- 
ful in finding what is characteristic, appealing, or significant in 
the world about us, we are, in a small impromptu way, ourselves 
artists.* But the man who is an artist because the interest in 
understanding and depicting things is a master passion with 
him, sees more deeply and more penetratingly than we do, and, 
seeing better, can also show better. His interests compel him 
to grasp certain significant aspects of persons and things of the 
real world which our blindness and preoccupation with personal 
and practical concerns ordinarily hide from us. 


* Mary Mullen, “An Approach to Art,” p. 23. 


CHAE hea 


THE PARTICULARCARTS 


No art* can reproduce fully the living concreteness of the real 
world, and so no art can provide the total experience with which 
active personal life presents us. The persons and things which 
we encounter affect us through various avenues of sense, and 
no one avenue can reveal to us all that they are. An orange, 
for instance, has a certain color, a distinctive taste and odor, and 
a shape which we can both see and feel. Of these qualities, only 
those which are visible can be produced by the painter. By the 
nature of his medium, his world is a soundless, tasteless, odorless 
and intangible one. In brief, all things have a variety of aspects 
of which only a fraction are directly accessible through the 
medium of eachart. If any of the others are indicated, they are 
indicated indirectly, as when a painter picks out visible traits 
that signify a particular character, temperament, or frame of 
mind. How far such representation is possible is a doubtful ques- 
tion, but it is clear that by far the greater number of the effects 
which, for example, literature can achieve, are beyond the com- 
pass of painting or music, and that the attempt to secure them 
is disastrous to proper pictorial or musical quality. 

Hitherto we have spoken of art in so far as it gives us insight 
or imaginative truth. But a work of art is not only a vehicle 
of imaginative insight, it is also a material object and as such it 
must be itself pleasing. That is, its individual appeal is a part 
of the total aesthetic effect. Language, for example, may be 
clear and forcible, but ugly in its sound, full of harsh dissonances 
and unpleasant rhythms. These things may not interfere with 
the sense of what is said, but they do detract from our pleasure 
in it. The same principle holds in music. Merely to have a 
command of the resources of orchestration will not save a com- 
poser from futility if his themes are commonplace or no more 
than sentimental or sensational, yet if the themes are impressive 
or moving the sensuous quality of effective orchestration is an 


* Laurence Buermeyer, ‘‘The Aesthetic Experience,’’ pp. 82 ff. 


ieee Uh AR ARS 29 


added element of appeal. What we may call “‘decorative qual- 
ity’’ is thus a value in art, and any account of art which over- 
looks it omits an important element in total aesthetic effect. 
Decorative quality in the visual arts may be illustrated by the 
pleasingness of vivid colors, or of simple designs and patterns. 
The decorations of china or of any ordinary fabric, the pattern 
in a wall paper or rug, have not a very exalted aesthetic value, 
but they have some value. This value is also to be found in 
the greatest works of art, in which it is combined with the other 
and more substantial qualities. The brilliant color of flowers, 
of sunsets, the diffused glow in a misty or dust-laden air when it 
reflects and refracts the sunlight, are further examples of the 
type of beauty in question. 

The appeal of such decorative beauty is probably to be ex- 
plained by its satisfaction of our general need of perceiving freely 
and agreeably. All our senses crave adequate stimulation, irre- 
spective of what stimulates them, just as there are times when 
we want to move our limbs or to talk, no matter whether our 
limbs take us anywhere in particular, or whether we have any- 
thing important to say. This need of employing our faculties 
in a manner congenial to us, decoration meets and satisfies. 

Let us consider how some of the recognized desiderata of art 
are related to this decorative quality of it. Every work of art, 
it is said, should have unity. Unity is the interrelation of parts, 
to the end that they shall all contribute .to a single effect. Nega- 
tively, it is the elimination of whatever is superfluous or jarring, 
of all that could distract the attention or call up irrelevant asso- 
ciations. Unity, however, relates both to the expressive role of 
a work of art and to its decorative aspect. In a novel, for 
example, the novelist must present us with a coherent concep- 
tion both of his individual characters, and of the situation and 
plot through which their characteristics are elicited. If any 
personage fails to play a consistent part, if some of his actions 
are not in keeping with his character as revealed otherwise, we 
say that the novelist has not thought him out consistently. If 
the plot has to be kept going by the introduction of new factors 
not inherent in the situation, if complications are introduced 
which do not spring from the original circumstances in their 
natural development, there is a loss of unity. In these instances, 
the lack of unity springs from the novelist’s failure to grasp and 
digest the subject which he is presenting. 


30 INT RODU CGC DLON 


On the other hand, where there is no lack of unity in the rep- 
resentative aspect of a work, there may be an awkwardness of 
presentation, failure to show what has to be shown in the most 
easily apprehensible fashion. In such cases, the work loses its 
full possibilities of satisfying all of our demands because it lacks 
decorative quality. The purpose of unity is to facilitate simul- 
taneous grasp of many details. What clearly, as we say, “hangs 
together,”” can be taken in readily and agreeably. Our general 
preference for making no greater effort than the situation requires, 
is thus met, and the pleasurableness of the experience is by so 
much increased. A painter may have a searching and vigorous 
grasp of what he wishes to show, and his pictures may still suffer 
from the fact that he tries to show too much for his design, for 
the scheme according to which he arranges his subject-matter. 
We feel that the canvas is overloaded and, therefore, fails in 
unity. It lacks that single grasp of the significant features of 
what is shown: the line, color, movement and balance of forces 
do not unite to produce a single effect. But the simple fact 
of unity in pattern is something over and above this unity 
in all the factors in the picture; it has a value of its own when 
the more profound unity is lacking; and in the best painting the 
two will be found combined. 

In any work of art we require that there be sufficient elements 
to stimulate our senses and hold our attention; otherwise there 
would be monotony, or a flagging of our interest. Just as 
we have seen that unity depends upon the need for ease in 
apprehension, so variety depends upon enjoyment of much stimu- 
lation of the senses. One form of variety is multiplicity of 
objective factors; that is, the presence in the object depicted, 
of mass or solidity, movement as well as effective grouping, 
large number of figures in the composition, etc. But there is 
also a merely decorative variety, which is secondary to the pri- 
mary purpose of the painting. Ornament in the background, 
pleasing line which does not directly enter into the main struc- 
ture of the composition, and so on, add to the total effect of the 
picture, although they might be eliminated without serious 
damage. In general, we find it satisfactory to perceive as much 
as is consistent with unity in the perception. 

The general contrast between essential or substantial unity 
and variety, with the attendant impression of power, and 
decorative unity and variety, may be illustrated if we compare 


rom er MEN ae AST 31 


Cézanne with Fragonard. Cézanne’s pictures reveal a vigor of 
insight, a concentration upon the essential, which is largely 
absent even from the best of Fragonard’s; Cézanne’s are more 
austere, but at the same time less graceful, less obviously charm- 
ing. The same contrast appears if we compare Daumier with 
Puvis. In Renoir, for example, both elements, the essential and 
the charming, are combined, with corresponding enhancement of 
the total aesthetic effect. Penetration or power, and decorative 
charm, are thus the two essential qualities in any work of art. 

We may now consider the question of what the spectator him- 
self must bring to a work of art if the fullest appreciation is to 
take place. The aesthetic experience, like all other experiences, 
is possible only by virtue of a certain background and training. 
Appreciation depends partly upon natural aptitude and partly 
upon previous experience. We perceive, in general, only what 
we can recognize, that is, only what previous perceptions have 
made at least in part familiar to us. When anything perceived 
is said to be novel, it is never wholly novel. It may be a new 
combination of old elements, a familiar theme with fresh varia- 
tions; but its novelty is a detail in a context, a particular situa- 
tion, which is not novel, and by this context we interpretit. The 
residue of past experience by which present experience is inter- 
preted is called in psychology the “‘apperceptive mass,’’ and its 
function in the appreciation of art is so Weta that it requires 
illumination in some detail. 

We have all had the experience of being in an fanterril ts situa- 
tion, and finding ourselves unable to see more than a fraction 
of what is going on init. The machinery in the hold of a steam- 
ship, the babel of voices when many people are speaking in a 
foreign language, the actions of those with whose manners, 
customs, and traditions we are unfamiliar—all these things are 
likely to appear to us as so much confusion and blur. Our 
difficulty is both that we do not see and that we do not com- 
prehend. We see and hear something, and we can at least 
recognize wheels and shafts in the machinery, vowel sounds and 
consonant sounds in the words spoken, gestures and goings to 
and fro in the actions of the strange people. But we perceive 
vaguely, and much of what is happening escapes us altogether. 
It is only after, and by means of, understanding, that we can 
perceive with any precision, or notice more than a small part 
of the details in the scene before us. What we do see is hazy, 


32 INTRODUCTION 


scanty, and without perspective. We overlook the important 
and significant, and the odds and ends that come to our attention 
are jumbled together without rhyme or reason. Our senses, 
meanwhile, may be as acute as those of another who misses 
nothing in the picture; but we have not learned to use them, and 
he has. 

The expression “‘to use our senses’’ is an indication that 
seeing or hearing is an active process, not a mere registration of 
impressions. After we have learned the purpose and the general 
plan of the machinery, we know how to look for the parts and 
the connections of which we were at first oblivious. When we 
have learned the vocabulary of a foreign language and know 
what to listen for, the finer shades of sound begin to stand out. 
We have acquired by experience a background which enables us 
to comprehend the machinery or the foreign language. 

The manner in which we acquire this background, this funded 
experience, which enables us to comprehend, is through the 
medium of the senses. In all experience the process is essen- 
tially the same. An object at first vague becomes more clearly 
defined; it takes form in our mind; and at the same time the 
things in it which at first we overlooked come to our attention 
and seem to be so unmistakably there, in relationships which enable 
us to comprehend the situation, that we cannot understand how 
they could ever have escaped us. This is true whether the 
object be a fountain pen, a suit of clothes, a sentence in the 
French language, the motor of an automobile, a symphony, or 
a painting. 

But there are important differences in the way in which the 
process takes place in different minds. The foreign language 
may develop from vagueness into clarity easily and rapidly; the 
painting may offer more resistance; the symphony, after a dozen 
hearings, may be as incomprehensible as it was at the start. 
Here native ability and interest are the determining factors, 
but ability varies more widely than in the matter of learning to 
understand a fountain pen, or to put on a suit of clothes. The 
more complicated instances make clearer the truth that minds 
are responsive to varying objects in varying degree, and prove 
that experience is never gained by mere repeated exposure to an 
object or situation. Experience depends on more than mere 
length of acquaintance, and on more than mere intention. If 
we have no musical endowment, the most resolute and pains- 


THE PARTICULAR ARTS 33 


taking intention to appreciate Bach will avail us little. It is in 
general well known that equal opportunities and equal expendi- 
tures of effort rarely, if ever, yield the same results, and the 
difference means that people differ in their capacity to have 
experience of any given kind. Specific ability and genuine 
interest, as well as long acquaintance with anything, is therefore 
necessary to a finely responsive and intelligent experience. 

The conception of a funded experience, of an apperceptive 
mass, has a direct application to art. Such experience is essen- 
tial if we are to find what the artist has put in his work. With- 
out it we cannot judge of his intentions or estimate the ade- 
quacy of their execution. We are in the position of one trying 
to decipher a cryptogram without knowing the code. The 
vision of a painter or of a poet is a sealed book to him who has 
no recollections of his own which the color, line, space, or the 
words, may assemble and vivify. A proper background of funded 
experience is thus necessary to open our eyes and set the strings 
of our feeling in sympathetic vibration with the artist’s. With- 
out it, we are in the proverbial difficulty of having eyes and 
seeing not, ears and hearing not. 

We shall now try to show how insight into reality, the beauty 
of decoration, and the most fully developed responsiveness on 
the spectator’s part enter into painting and its enjoyment. 


CHA Pale hal. 


THE AESTHETIC VALUES OF PAINTING 


I. ART AND SUBJECT-MATTER 


WE have seen that the values to be found in any work of art 
are those embodied in an imaginative grasp of subject matter 
and its presentation in a form which has variety, decorative 
charm, and unity. Our general problem is now to consider these 
qualities in painting and to point out the way in which they may 
be found and judged. 

We know that from among the many visual qualities of things 
the artist selects and emphasizes those which will provide us 
with a richer and better grasp of the world than we could achieve 
unaided. The word ‘‘better’’ requires explanation, and the 
explanation involves a statement of the way in which we ordi- 
narily perceive things. It is sometimes supposed that our per- 
ceptions are photographic and that the artist’s work is that of 
embellishing these photographic perceptions, giving us a more 
agreeable substitute for what would be, in its unadorned literal- 
ness, unaesthetic. The assumption underlying this view is false, 
for we see things, not as they are, but as convention has always 
conceived them. This is true of all things whether the seeing is 
literally ‘‘seeing,’’ or such only figuratively, as when we speak 
of seeing a man’s point of view. We see only in the light of our 
background, of the funded experience, noted in the previous 
chapter. Science has made it abundantly clear that to perceive 
requires a long training and an indefinite amount of labor. The 
ideas we have are those of the society in which we grow up and 
they are confirmed by the habits which that society imposes upon 
us. Our natural tendency is to see only so much as will fit easily 
into these ideas, and to overlook all that is distinctive or individ- 
ual in any object or situation. What we suppose ourselves to 
see is thus largely the projection of our own minds, in which the 
real object is both impoverished by omissions and overlaid by 
accretions. These omissions and accretions testify to the par- 


ee Por eV Ads ee be bP ALN GUN G 35 


tiality of our interests, to our shortsightedness. They show 
that when we begin to take account of our world we are far 
from an impartial and clear-sighted view of it. 

This fact of the psychology of perception is corroborated by 
the history of art. Primitive art individualizes its objects very 
inadequately. In place of particulars, it gives us types. Not 
only are its figures very much alike, but in their grouping, in 
their relation to their background, and in the background itself 
there is very close adherence to a formula. It is unreasonable 
to suppose that the painters who worked according to these 
formulas deliberately chose to do so, after rejecting all alterna- 
tive possibilities. They painted things as they saw them, but 
they saw them in a stereotyped, conventional form. Hence, we 
have the Florentine type, the Venetian type, the Impressionist 
type, each distinctive of a particular period in the history of art. 

The artist’s task is to shun the conventional idealizations 
which represent things as they are habitually conceived, and to 
see things as they are in reality. Great art has always been 
realistic, but since truth, when unfamiliar, outrages the sensi- 
bilities of those who cling to ancient habits, great art is nearly 
always greeted with the charge of ugliness, of falsity, of anarchic 
misrepresentation. The charge merely means that the artist 
compels the spectator of his work to see the world anew, and 
that the spectator projects the unpleasantness of the operation 
into the work of art. Anarchy, falsity, charlatanism and ugli- 
ness are the stock terms of abuse applied to every great artist by 
his own generation, but what these terms really mean is their 
exact opposite—that the artist has a grasp of things more 
profoundly ordered and so more beautiful than that current in 
his day.* 

‘“‘Realism,’’ however, suggests only one side of the truth, and 
if insisted upon to the exclusion of everything else, leads to a 
pitfall no less fatal to art than the smooth beauty of the con- 
ventionalist. If it is true that conventions hide the truth from 
us, it is also true that only through conventions, existing as 
masses of funded experience, can we hope ever to find the truth. 
The painter who attempts to throw tradition overboard entirely 
may escape illusion, but he escapes it at the cost of comparative 


* Mary Mullen, “An Approach to Art,” passim, but especially p. 18. 


36 DNGCT ROD Gare ON, 


blindness. He merely exchanges the traditions of art for those 
of ordinary life, which latter are so deeply ingrained that they 
cannot be discarded. His work then becomes mere literalism. 
For the conventions of the academy he substitutes those of the 
camera and forgets that Nature, uninterpreted by human desires 
and human experiences, has no aesthetic quality atall. Its repre- 
sentation reveals no significance, has no moving force; the artist 
sinks into the craftsman. Art steers a middle course between 
conventional ‘‘idealism’’ and photographic literalism, and there 
is no abstract formula, no mechanical device, by which the 
course may be plotted. Ultimately, the appeal is to feeling, the 
cultivated feeling of the person who is naturally sensitive to 
the specific values of plastic art, and whose sensitiveness has been 
developed and disciplined by long experience. 

It is obvious that he who would appreciate and judge of art 
must provide himself with a first-hand acquaintance with what 
the artist seeks to show him, that is, the visible aspect of real 
things. His training in art must include a study of nature as it 
reveals itself to the eye. If he is interested in seeing how things 
really look, in the effect made by their coloring, their arrangement, 
their changing appearance in light and shadow, his enjoyment 
of nature is the selective one of the artist. The artist is interested 
in seeing the essential visible reality of things and in showing 
them in new forms that move us emotionally. Unless the interest 
in seeing is shared by the observer of a work of art, he cannot 
share the artist’s experience. If he does share the interest, it 
will find expression in appreciation of the aesthetic phases of 
every-day life as well as in the museum. 

The case is analogous to that of literature. Literature is also 
an interpretation of life; it sets forth what the writer has found 
of comedy, pathos, or drama in the personal experience of 
human beings. The reader who has himself no personal experi- 
ence, who cannot bring the content of literature to the touch- 
stone of his own life, cannot tell whether or not the writer’s art 
is sensitive, intelligent, or wide in its imaginative scope. Such 
a reader remains essentially a man of words and books, pre- 
occupied with tricks of style and literary devices, a grammarian 
and an academician. He cannot in any real sense grasp what 
the writer means to say and certainly cannot add to it any feel- 
ings of his own that come from similar experiences. 


Roe ee Gea oe OE PAT N DENG 37 


II. THE NATURE OF FORM 

In every-day speech we constantly encounter the word ‘‘form”’ 
and in reading about art we see the word used with what is 
evidently a significance peculiar to art. In its general sense, we 
know that it is form which gives a thing its distinctive indi- 
viduality; but writers on art have used the word ‘“‘form’’ with 
sO many meanings that the utmost confusion and ambiguity 
exist. This condition of affairs necessitates a definition of the 
word in its general meaning if we are to use it with accuracy and 
precision when we mean form as related to art. In point of 
fact, form has no significance in art that it does not have in 
language accurately employed in connection with things in gen- 
eral. First, let us consider the general meaning of the word. 
All objects in the world have certain attributes which we term 
qualities when we are referring to things, and sensations when 
we refer to our own experiences. For example, a table is brown, 
smooth, hard and cold; it is also oblong, three feet high and its 
color varies whether it is in light or in shadow. But the sum 
total of these qualities is not what we mean when we say the 
word ‘‘table,’’ for another object could have all these qualities 
and be not a table or anything that looks like one. We perceive 
it as a table only when we see those qualities im certain relations 
to each other, the relation of each one of its parts to the other 
parts and the relation of it as a whole to other objects. That is, 
to grasp it as an individual thing is to see those relations; to see 
the form which gives the essence of the thing, makes it what it 
is. These relations make up a pattern; in every object of which 
we are conscious there is a pattern, and until we know the 
pattern, we do not know the thing. Ina table, the pattern con- 
sists of a net-work of spatial relations in which color, hardness, 
illumination, etc., are arranged in a certain definite order. 

In the form of a human being, we find a more complex series of 
relationships: there is a certain expanse of brow, broadness or 
narrowness of face, ratio between breadth of shoulders and height. 
It is the perception of these relationships that gives us the form 
of a man when stationary. For the form of a man in movement, 
the relation is between his position at one moment and his position 
at another moment: the way in which arms and legs are bent 
and straightened, in which the body sways with each step, etc. 


38 INDRODUGATLON 


The form of a man speaking or singing is made of a series of 
relationships established by the use of his voice: a rich voice 
has many overtones, it is a fuller chord than a thin voice; monot- 
ony of voice is absence of inflection, of change in pitch or volume. 
Each of these, a rich, thin, or monotonous voice, is a form made 
up of a different series of relationships. Finally, if we consider 
the man as a whole, as an ensemble of physical, intellectual and 
moral qualities, only those things are recognized as character- 
istic of him which are seen in relation to the rest of what he is 
and does, and to the situation in which he exists and acts. 

The word form in connection with art is frequently used with 
a subjective meaning implied, but here too it is a series of rela- 
tionships. All experience leaves in the memory a residue, a com- 
paratively permanent possession, and that is employed to inter- 
pret new situations analogous to the original. Such a residue 
consists of the series of relationships which gave the experi- 
ence its distinctive and individual characteristics, that is, its 
form. Even though the form be so hazy and inadequate as to 
misrepresent its original, what trace is left, exists as a form. It 
is the accumulation of these forms that constitutes our back- 
ground, our mass of funded experience, which psychologists 
term the apperceptive mass. That mass is never a mere jumble 
of sensations, or images, but is always a grouping of them. 
These funded forms enable us to recognize an object, and the 
process of learning by experience is nothing more than a gradual 
organization of many sets of impressions into literally innumer- 
able distinctive forms. 

Much of the confusion and ambiguity in the use of the word 
form has resulted from ignoring the obvious fact that no object 
or situation has one form and only one form. A man may be 
French, a Jew, an engineer, a thief, a celibate; New York is a 
city, a financial centre, a harbor; in each case the man’s or the 
city’s form varies according to the grouping of relations which 
determine each category, and no single form represents either 
the man or the city in concrete fullness. Which of the various 
aspects we select to designate the man or the city depends upon 
the most representative or characteristic experience we have 
had with them. Obviously, the most adequate representation 
would be one composed of the greatest number of forms which 
go to make up the man or the city. In general, the depth and 
power of a mind or personality is measured by the variety 


Pee wart tev A Ue OOK PAT NT ENG 30 


and subtlety of the forms accessible to it and by its power to 
illuminate the whole of the object, which is a complex of many 
forms. 

Whenever we use the word form we mean that matter is organ- 
ized into a distinctive entity; but the matter organized may be 
itself form in relation to other matter. For example: the United 
States is an organization of separate states, and within that 
organization the United States is the form and the states the 
matter. If we abstract any one state and consider it in relation 
to its component counties, the state becomes the form and the 
counties the matter organized into the form of a state. An 
exactly analogous situation is found in painting. Subsidiary to 
the plastic form, which is the unification of all the matter of the 
canvas, there exist a number of minor forms made up of color, 
line, space, and these latter enter into relations with each other 
and make more complex forms. The plastic form comprises all 
the forms made up of the various elements, including the pattern 
which organizes the decoration. 

Form, in its widest sense, is the plan of organization by which 
the details that constitute the matter of an object are brought 
into relation, so that they unite to produce a single aesthetic 
effect. This is true of a painting, a symphony, a piece of sculp- 
ture, a poem, drama, novel, or essay. In the case of each, 
form dominates all the subtypes of the matter which enter into 
the work of art. In the form which we term symphony, its 
contained matter—chords, melodies, movements—are brought 
into the particular relations which make that form a symphony. 
In painting, the matter—line, color, space—is unified into the 
form we term plastic unity. The more fully the work of integra- 
tion is carried out, that is, the greater the formal unification of 
all the constituent matter, the better the painting, the symphony, 
or the statue. 

We see, therefore, that forms may have infinite variety, that 
the greatest scope exists for the artist to integrate his matter into 
forms in which the only limits are the possibilities of his medium, 
his own imagination, and his own technical skill. Failure to 
recognize this protean character of form is responsible for the 
vast amount of absurd writing on art which would limit plastic 
form to that particular expression which the critic happens to 
prefer. Such an attitude is invariably the mark of incapacity 
and academicism. The use of a particular plan of organization, 


40 INTRODUCTION 


or form, depends upon purely personal characteristics, like tem- 
perament, vision, sensitivity, and a painter is an artist in so far 
as he is endowed with those qualities and is able to reveal them 
in his work. Consequently, he alone can determine the form his 
painting must take. In condemning an artist whose form is 
personal, distinctive and original, the critic is not dealing with 
art itself, but is asserting that art must conform to standards 
which are basically mechanized or stereotyped and, therefore, 
academic. This means that the standard set is the imitation of 
familiar forms either in nature or the art of the past, without 
the living spirit that converts them into the reality we always 
find in true art. Such imitation defines academicism, and con- 
joined with mere technical skill it sets the standard of whatever 
type of painting happens to be popular. Academicians like John 
Singer Sargent and Robert Henri use Manet’s technique but 
fail to capture its spirit of life. Childe Hassam, Redfield, Garber 
and a host of others play the same role in relation to Claude 
Monet. Whistler represents a dead academic synthesis of 
Velasquez, the Japanese and Courbet. Derain’s form has been 
successively an imitation of the surface qualities of Cézanne, 
Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Bronzino, Courbet, Corot and 
Renoir. 


II. FORM AND TECHNIQUE 


The foregoing discussion shows that form constitutes the 
essence of an object, that which gives the object its distinctive 
individuality, makes it what itis. In painting, the forms which 
a painter creates reveal unerringly the organization of his mind 
and character. Just as the forms of things themselves are pro- 
tean, many-sided, varying under different circumstances and at 
different periods of time, so also are varied the forms which an 
artist may create. The painter’s individuality finds expres- 
sion in what he sees to be distinctive and characteristic in the 
real world, and, since it is form that confers individuality, this 
amounts to the perception of a specific form. But the rendering 
of different forms requires different technical means, different 
styles; it is thus that “the style is the man.”’ The point may be 
made clear by a few illustrations, beginning with Claude Lorrain, 
the father of landscape painting. If we consider landscape 
painting as a purely objective affair, as an attempt to render 


Piette kee Near te UO Eee Ob) SPAT ND DING 4I 


with literal fidelity the appearance of meadow, stream, forest 
and mountain, we shall note points in which Claude fell short 
of his successors, and consider him merely as a stepping-stone 
to later men, to Constable, Corot, Monet or Cézanne. He will 
seem to be inferior to Monet in ability to show how color is 
affected by light and shadow, to Courbet in grasp of the natural- 
istic reality of individual objects, in the force and vigor he can 
lend to the rocks, trees and human figures in his landscapes. 
Cézanne surpassed him in his eye for the essential and living in 
nature, in ability to discard the irrelevant and lend solidity and 
substance to masses in three dimensions. 

To hold these relative disadvantages against Claude is to 
mistake the meaning of aesthetic intention and form. The 
artist must be judged by what he tries to do; the fact that forms 
of one sort are absent from his work does not detract from its 
value if it contains the forms which reveal what he was interested 
to show. Claude was interested in nature, not for any indepen- 
dent life it might contain in its parts, but as an embodiment, on 
a large scale, of human feelings. It was the landscape as a whole 
which served for him as the object of emotion; he was desirous 
of rendering ‘‘the spirit of the place,’’ and the total form, that is, 
his design, was of paramount importance. It is precisely that 
design, that presentation of subtle relationships between the 
elements in his composition, that gives the romance, the glamor, 
the mystery, the grandeur, the melancholy, the majesty, which 
are expressible through the larger groupings of natural objects. 
For that general effect, too much individuality in the parts of 
the composition would be destructive. The comparative life- 
lessness of detail in trees, rocks, etc., the absence of what is 
arresting or moving in separate figures, really contributes to the 
impression at which he aims. The fact that he often had his 
figures painted in by others is therefore not a reflection upon 
his art, but an indication that he could recognize what was really 
indispensable to his purpose and leave what was incidental to 
assistants. 

Claude’s form was thus the design by which large effects are 
rendered, and for this his style was admirably adapted. Manet 
aimed at an effect quite opposite to that of Claude. He was 
not trying to portray the epic quality which may attach to a 
wide expanse of landscape, but the distinctive, natural quality 
of individual things. For Claude, the particular detail was 


4 


42 INTRODUCTION 


submerged in the picture as a whole, and had no importance in 
itself. Although he did not simplify, but painted all details 
with considerable fullness, the attention they received was per- 
functory. Manet’s objects and figures are much more simplified ; 
but the few details selected for emphasis succeed in individualiz- 
ing the object much more than do Claude’s more literal and 
diffuse representations. The effort to give what is unique in 
the things of ordinary life, to show their essential quality, 
appears in Manet’s brush-work and in his rejection of the third 
dimension and of chiaroscuro. An arrangement of objects in 
deep space, the varying effects upon a set of objects of light 
coming from a single source, all point to things as organized into 
extensive compositions. Manet was not interested in things as 
a part of a world, but in things as they are in themselves, with 
only enough relation to other things to show their characteristic 
function; hence his design was flat, while Claude’s was set in deep 
space. 

An analogy with literature may enforce the contrast, and show 
the parallel between style and subject matter. Claude lived in 
the century of Milton; Manet in that of Maupassant. The 
Seventeenth Century still aimed at monumental effects, such as 
those of the Renaissance; it was the century of ‘‘ Paradise Lost.”’ 
The Nineteenth Century, especially the latter half of it, had a 
much more restricted vision, but saw much more clearly and 
penetratingly what came within its range. Manet’s form was 
a distinct thing in itself, representative of himself and of the 
spirit of his age. To censure him because he lacks the scope 
and poetry of Claude would be as unjust as to censure Maupas- 
sant because he lacks the amplitude and magnificence, the 
elevation of sentiment and the sweep of rhythm, which repre- 
sent Milton’s form and the spirit of his time. 

With Cézanne we have an aesthetic purpose different from 
either that of Claude or that of Manet, and a correspondingly 
distinctive technique. Cézanne shared Manet’s interest in real 
things, but he sought to represent more clearly the dynamic 
relations between things. Neither painter attempted merely 
to be literal; both tried to render the essential; but for Manet’s 
general form, flat painting was more expressive, while for 
Cézanne’s the essential was defined in terms of solidity and spatial 
relationship in three dimensions. This concern, combined with 
the impressionistic interest in color, necessitated the use of a 


Rs Belen Lit oO TPA LN TUNG 43 


new form. He saw in things an organization which could be 
rendered by the use of color in connection with a series of dis- 
torted planes. To express this organization, he created his 
own technique or style, and the results prove the efficacy of the 
means. 

Academic criticism necessarily fails to estimate justly the work 
of any artist, because its fixed standards are incongruous in a world 
which is in a state of flux. Every technical device is, however, 
correlated with a definite aesthetic purpose; it is a means, not 
just of showing things, but of showing something in particular. 
Unless we have seen what the artist intends to show we cannot 
'tell whether the means are appropriate or inappropriate. When’ 
an artist takes over the technique of one of his predecessors 
without sharing the vision which animated it, he takes over a 
mortal body but loses its immortal soul. He becomes an aca- 
demic or eclectic painter, and his work suffers a loss of all vitality 
or individuality. This is not true of a painter who genuinely 
works in a tradition, because he has seen for himself what the 
tradition has to show him, and uses its technical means not 
mechanically but intelligently. Like everyone who has really 
grasped a principle or method, he is able to make fresh applica- 
tions of it; it is a means of seeing by which his eye is opened to 
something not previously seen or put down. In that fresh 
applications are made, the originality of the painter is vindi- 
cated: Bellini, Giorgione, Titian and Tintoretto all worked in 
the Venetian tradition and each created new forms of his own 
which greatly enriched that tradition. 

Cézanne suffers no loss of individuality because his work 
shows him to have learned from Michel Angelo, El Greco and 
Pissarro. From Michel Angelo he learned the value of muscu- 
lar accentuations in achieving solidity; from El Greco, he learned 
the value of distortions in enriching design; from Pissarro, he 
learned the value of color used in connection with light to make 
color more structural and more moving. But all of these tech- 
nical means he so modified and so welded into a form which is 
truly his own, that a new and distinct creation emerged. 

Derain, in contrast, cannot with accuracy be said to have 
learned from Cézanne and the host of other painters whose 
methods are clearly seen in his work. He has appropriated their 
methods, but he has not seen for himself what his mentors 
saw, and his borrowings from them accordingly become not 


44 INTRODUCTION 


methods but tricks of technique. Derain is an eclectic; like the 
Bolognese painters of the end of the Renaissance, he has appro- 
priated the devices of other men without creating anything new. 


IV. ‘(PEASTIG ANDI OTRERSVAEUES 


We have said that what an artist places before us is a series 
of forms, which, in objects and situations, appear to him as 
significant, and which were productive of the emotion which he 
seeks to embody. Since, as we have noted, every real object 
or situation contains a multitude of forms, it offers the artist 
an almost indefinite wealth of resources for aesthetic effect. Not 
all of these resources, however, are available to the artist as a 
worker in a particular medium. Music, literature, and plastic 
art each makes its own selection from the mass of forms which 
are presented by the real world; and the problem of the extent 
to which these selections overlap, the extent to which a picture 
or a symphony may properly be also dramatic or narrative, is 
one of the most difficult in aesthetics. .The tendency to look 
for illustration or narrative prevents the recognition of the 
properly expressive quality of the work of art and seeks to enjoy 
the subject matter as something independently real. It is 
undoubtedly true that the artist puts before us a representation 
which, merely as a representation of a thing in the real world, 
has associations of its own, and these may be independently 
agreeable. But it is difficult to avoid saying that these associa- 
tions are irrelevant unless they are represented in the picture 
itself. In brief, if we say that subject matter is of no importance, 
we seem to be committed to an advocacy of purely abstract art, 
to which representation is wholly irrelevant; and if we say that 
subject matter is not irrelevant, then it is not apparent how we 
shall discriminate between art and mere illustration. 

We have an analogous problem in music. ‘‘Absolute’’ music 
is usually considered a higher type of music than that to which 
words are to be sung. Words represent ideas, and definite 
ideas are only casually or adventitiously associated with the 
emotions which music arouses. Hence, opera, song, and indeed 
programme-music too, are condemned in contrast to sonata or 
symphony. On the other hand, when we compare, let us say, a 
symphony by Mozart with Beethoven’s “‘Eroica”’ and “Fifth,” it is 


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Pe er ede Uo sO) PAL NITIN:G 49 


impossible not to be conscious of a difference of a semi-literary 
quality. Beethoven’s own title for his “Third Symphony” is ‘‘In 
Memory of a Great Man,”’ and the symphony is heroic in essence, 
_as Mozart’s are not. Our appreciation is of the intrinsic quality 
of the music itself, which has the objective quality indicated by 
the title, and our enjoyment seems to be for that reason not the 
less but the more aesthetic. 

In contrast, let us consider Tschaikowsky’s overture entitled 
“1812.” With it there is a definite programme which narrates 
Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and his ultimate defeat there. 
After a solemn passage, suggesting the sacrificial frame of mind 
in which a nation springs to arms for the defense of its soil, we 
hear the ‘‘ Marseillaise,’’ which struggles in the orchestra with 
the Russian national anthem, amidst the noise of battle. The 
Russian hymn is at first given out in snatches, abruptly broken 
off; but it gradually becomes firmer, and is at last triumphantly 
played through, while the ‘‘ Marseillaise’’ wavers and disappears, 
and chimes and trumpets unite in a pean of victory. The pleas- 
ure afforded is largely amusement at a tour de force, and it is 
difficult not to feel that we are in the presence of what is essen- 
tially musical vaudeville. The device of representing a war by 
contention between the national anthems of the nations con- 
cerned, and of making music mimic a battle, seems unimaginative 
and childish. The total effect is sensational and offensive rather 
than aesthetic. - We feel that the association between the 
‘‘Marseillaise’’ and France is, from the point of view of music, 
entirely adventitious, and similarly with the Russian hymn. 
The composer has attempted to stir the emotions appropriate 
to music by use of the symbols of nationalism. It is almost as 
though a painter, to suggest danger, were to show us a railway 
signal-board standing at the angle which directs an engineer 
to stop his train. The idea would not be really embodied in the 
painting itself, any more than a man’s character is contained 
or implied in the name “Smith” or “Jones,” or the story of 
Waterloo set forth in Napoleon’s green coat and cocked hat. 

In this fact we find a clue to the general principle of the dis- 
tinction between legitimate and illegitimate use of subject- 
matter. In so far as the spectator or listener or reader must 
depend upon the resources of his own knowledge to read the 
qualities of the subject-matter into the artistic representation, 
the effect is illegitimate. An artist, however, is entitled to such 


50 INE RODU.CTTON 


effects as he can really incorporate into his rendering of a subject. 
In the second movement of the “‘Eroica’’ symphony, Beethoven 
actually makes us feel the spirit of tragedy in the music itself, 
and we need know nothing about the story to enjoy the music. 

The same principle appears in the field of plastic art. We 
have subject-matter employed at the lowest level when there is 
no real plastic equivalent for the narrative or sentimental theme. 
In an ordinary magazine illustration, the familiar devices are 
shuffled and recombined, the old tricks are rehearsed again, but 
there is the same absence of any individual perception, of any 
distinction in execution, that we find in the words and music of 
popular sentimental ballads. The subject-matter of such illus- 
trations is itself usually trite and trivial so that even from a 
literary point of view it is hopelessly crude and banal. Even 
great artists are human beings and sometimes they resort to the 
illegitimate use of subject-matter. Delacroix is entitled to 
great distinction as an artist if only for his contributions to the 
brilliant and powerful use of color. But he was also highly 
romantic and liked to portray fervid emotions, in which he 
expresses a personal note which is quite original, at least in the 
sense of being unusually striking. What he felt as heroism and 
romance, and depicted by exotic subject-matter and exaggerated 
gestures, seems to us now not sublime but overdramatic, if not 
bombastic. This fondness for Byronic stage-properties points to 
a defect in his observation of the things existing before his eyes. 
If his sense for the dramatic had sharpened his observation and 
enabled him to see in the real world the qualities he admired, 
both his grasp of form and the drama which he seeks to portray 
would have been better. Tintoretto also painted subjects of a 
highly dramatic nature but he gave us the plastic equivalent 
of the human values intrinsic to the situation, so that while in 
Delacroix we see flamboyance and melodrama, in Tintoretto we 
find the peace that aesthetic satisfaction always yields. 

In Goya, Daumier, Glackens and Pascin, we find illustration 
brought to such a high level that it becomes great art. All of 
them inform us about the situations they portray, but the means 
employed are truly plastic, used with individual expressiveness 
and extraordinary grasp of the significant. The pleasure we 
get from their work is of plastic origin in that the story they 
tell, while interesting in itself, is entirely subsidiary to the form 
in which the illustration is embodied. Color, line, space are 


Pee rte bh be VIAL Ui SmOR IAT N TING 51 


arranged in forms which move us independently of the comical, 
ironical or satiric in the situations depicted. Their forms are 
significant because of the imaginative vision, originality and 
power of their creators. 

In Velasquez and Renoir we have power of giving plastic form 
to values of subject-matter at a still higher level. Each had a 
distinctly personal vision as well as command over the resources 
of painting, color, drawing, composition, design, which permitted 
them to render the essence of the subjects which they treated. 
Renoir is the more poetic of the two. His painting catches the 
spirit of youth and springtime and vitality; he sees and draws 
forth the joyous and glamorous in the world. Velasquez is a 
realist, but his realism is penetrating to a degree that carries it 
far beyond mere literalism. He illuminates his subjects, not by 
adventitious ornament, but by a simplification and a self-effac- 
ing detachment which allows their inner nature to manifest itself 
through strictly plastic channels. Both men had an extra- 
ordinary eye for seeing which of the qualities of the real world 
lend themselves to plastic reproduction, and at the same time 
display the intrinsic nature of the objects into which they enter. 
In neither is the painting, as something over and above what is 
represented, merely an end in itself. The ornamental motive 
in evidence in Renoir is so fused with the structural elements that 
an enriched plastic form emerges. The picture sheds light upon 
what is represented, and this revelation of the world has a value 
which, though in the strict sense illustrative, is truly plastic or 
pictorial, and not at all “literary.” 

It is often considered that with the advent of Courbet and 
Manet the values of subject-matter disappeared from plastic 
art, since these painters, and the majority of their successors, 
painted anything whatever. In this they undoubtedly show a 
contrast with their predecessors from Giotto to Delacroix. 
There is a serious fallacy, however, in arguing from the fact that 
painting no longer confines itself to a particular sort of subject 
to the conclusion that it has lost interest in subject-matter 
altogether. We do not ordinarily care whether we have one 
particular coin or bank note, or another, so long as they have 
the power to satisfy some needs of our mind or body. When 
Manet and his successors said that the subject did not matter, 
they meant merely that the qualities in which they were inter- 
ested could be found in any subject whatever. Manet believed 


52 INTRODUCTION 


that all things are interesting for what they are in themselves, 
not from some pose which they can assume. He was more truly 
interested in subject than, for example, David, since he could 
find something worth recording in anything, and not only in the 
‘‘noble,”’ that is, the stiff or affected. Manet was interested in 
life and David in death. 

Another serious misconception is that the expression ‘‘sub- 
ject-matter’’ must be limited to individual things. In a cubist 
picture, the thread of connection with individual topics or objects 
may be very slight, and the picture is certainly not moving 
because it incorporates the values of the individual thing repre- 
sented. For example, it may show a violin disintegrated into 
many planes, all revealing partial views, seen from various 
angles, rendered with every degree of distortion, and recombined 
into a form which is plastic but not representative, and which 
may have acharm and an emotional force of itsown. The degree 
of resemblance between picture and original may be so slight 
that, but for the title, identification would be impossible. Even 
when identification is made, aesthetic satisfaction may be 
increased little if at all. 

This instance proves that forms may be charged with aesthetic 
feeling even when they represent nothing definite in the real 
world or when what they represent is clearly without appeal in 
itself. This may seem like a reductio ad absurdum of the view 
that aesthetic value has anything to do with the values of 
subject-matter. But a hypothesis offered by Mr. Laurence 
Buermeyer seems to us to explain the situation satisfactorily. 
His theory is as follows. 

All emotions are at least in part generalized: they are called 
forth not merely by particular things or situations, but by vir- 
tue of universal qualities which these things contain. This is 
true of the ordinary emotions and also of the aesthetic emotions. 
When we cannot find in a picture representation of any par- 
ticular object, what it represents may be the qualities which all 
particular objects share, such as color, extensity, solidity, move- 
ment, rhythm, etc. All particular things have these qualities; 
hence what serves, so to speak, as a paradigm of the visible 
essence of all things may hold in solution the emotions which 
individual things provoke in a more highly specialized form. 
It may give us a realizing sense of space, of externality, of col- 
orfulness, of mobility, and along with these a distillation of 


AESTHETIC VALUES OF PAINTING 53 


the feelings which spacious, colorful, moving objects provide. 
Mr. Buermeyer adds plausibility by suggesting analogous cases 
of relatively vague apprehension or feeling. When we hear such 
words as ‘‘and,” “but,” ‘‘although,”’ ‘‘therefore,’’ we have 
usually little or nothing in the way of mental imagery, and yet 
there is no lack of meaning. We grasp something, even in the 
absence of any mental imagery: consciousness is not the less 
real because it is generalized. Again, music awakens very 
definite emotions, even in the absence of any perceptible objec- 
tive reference. One air may make us sad, another joyous; 
neither may call up any definite reference whatever, and the 
cause of the difference may defy analysis; but the effect is 
incontestable. In other words, feelings travel far afield from 
the objects that excited them originally, and it is therefore a 
mistake to suppose that a feeling has no objective reference 
because its object has no clear resemblance to the object that 
served it as stimulus originally. In each instance, we draw upon 
a general fund of experience, that is, upon our apperceptive mass. 

If Mr. Buermeyer’s hypothesis is true, then cubistic pictures 
of the kind mentioned only represent a stage beyond that of 
impressionism. The impressionists were interested in any or 
every object, because every object had its own characteristic 
form or quality which might be given pictorial representation. 
The cubists are interested not in the qualities which distinguish, 
let us say, an apple as an apple, or a woman as a woman, but in 
the qualities which are common to both as parts of the visible 
universe. Indeed, between the impressionists like Claude Monet 
and the cubists, there stands a painter, Cézanne, who seems to 
represent a transitional type. His figures do not seem obviously 
“‘natural’’ and ‘‘life-like,’’ as do Manet’s; they are sometimes 
distorted out of any close resemblance to the objective things 
which they represent; and yet they seem to have even a more 
intense reality than Manet’s. This reality is not that of literal 
representation and it does not depend merely upon such things 
as depth and apparent tangibility; it is more generalized but not 
therefore less objective. It would be beside the point to contend 
that this increased reality is due to plastic form; the matter of 
representation is clearly separable from that of plastic qualities. 

What we have been contending for is the fact that reference 
to the real world does not disappear from art as forms cease to 
be those of actually existing things, any more than objectivity 

5} 


54 INTRODUCTION 


departs from science when it ceases to talk in terms of earth, 
air, fire and water, and substitutes for these the less easily 
recognizable ‘‘hydrogen,” ‘‘oxygen,” ‘‘nitrogen’’ and “carbon.” 

Critics differ so widely in their estimate of the aesthetic value 
of any particular form or set of forms that what to one seems 
merely literary or photographic, seems to another a profound 
and searching grasp of essentials. The principal reason for 
difference in judgments of all kinds lies in the fact that no two 
men have the same fund of experience, and consequently no two 
men are precisely on a par in their ability to follow the lead given 
by a painter. Above a certain level, appreciation is always in 
part the creative appreciation of one who is acutely sensitive to 
forms or who has a large mass of funded experience. In such 
cases the individual is rarely able to gauge the precise extent to 
which his enjoyment comes from his own resources and is not 
intrinsic to the work of art. 

For instance, Gauguin’s Tahitian pictures, which are his most 
distinctive achievements, may have an appeal by virtue of their 
subject-matter. Its exotic, even lurid, quality may seem either 
a genuinely aesthetic value, like Constable’s power of catching 
the spirit of an English country-side, or merely meretricious, 
a device for stimulating a palate weary of the more sober scenes 
of an older civilization. Putting to one side the question of 
Gauguin’s properly plastic virtues, we may say that the ques- 
tion is one of individual taste and interest. There are people 
who constantly desire experiences as different as possible from 
those with which they are familiar, who are chiefly concerned 
to add to the sum of their sensations. Such experiences are 
vicarious adventures, a living of a more exciting life than their 
own humdrum world provides. There is another class of 
people who prefer to discriminate between those experiences 
they already have had and thus to classify, order and penetrate 
deeply into a relatively small segment of life. Both interests 
are legitimate; extensive experience has a value as well as inten- 
sive; but primary devotion to either makes the other appear 
inferior. Constable will seem comparatively tame to the man 
of one temperament; Gauguin, crude to a man of the other. 
The reason is that the bent of mind which makes Constable’s 
work seem fertile in suggestion leaves its possessor unresponsive 
to alien scenes and incapable of being stimulated by them to 
imaginative excursions of his own; and the same is true, with 


Pees Va eV oe O RA PAITN TIN G 55 


roles reversed, of the man of opposite bent. In general, if we 
are shown something which awakens no echoes in ourselves it 
may seem merely literal or photographic or dry or superficial: 
the only clue that is meaningful to us is one which our interests 
will prompt us to follow up. By the same token, science may 
seem dry and trivial or mechanical to those who have no desire 
to understand the world intellectually; and poetry seem tedious, 
futile, or trifling to those who care nothing for imaginative 
understanding. Each is right in his own sphere, and wrong 
only in supposing that his sphere leaves room for no other. 

In contrasting Gauguin with-Constable, we have been referring 
to the attitude of the human being of average culture rather than 
to the highly equipped specialist primarily. concerned with the 
aesthetic significance of plastic elements. The plastic form in 
Gauguin’s work is obviously thin and feeble compared with the 
same in Constable. When Gauguin’s work stimulates a specta- 
tor to the point of aesthetic fullness, we have clearly a case of 
temperamental preference for subject-matter usurping the func- 
tion of an external stimulus of a purely plastic nature. That is 
a legitimate aesthetic experience, but it amounts to a kind of 
interpretative criticism which an individual’s own personality 
reads into the painting. It means merely that a plastic form 
need not be in itself very strong to set in vibration the chords 
of sympathy which, once under way, increase in volume and 
power and carry the individual into a world of aesthetic experi- 
ence which is to a large extent of his own making rather than 
that of the painter. In the case of Constable, the plastic form 
is powerful enough in itself to move a trained observer to greater 
aesthetic heights than the plastic form in Gauguin. He need 
have no preference for the subject-matter and still have the 
capacity of interpretative criticism that comes from native 
sensibility and a rich fund of experience. A disinterested person 
would be able to say, and on good psychological grounds, that 
there is a tinge of sentimentalism in the Gauguin enthusiast. 


V. FORM AND MATTER 


We have hitherto spoken of art values only in relation to form, 
and have made only casual mention of the material or matter 
which is organized into forms. We have seen that the distinc- 


56 UN DRO Dil Gili OWN 


tion between form and matter is only relative; that we cannot 
think of form and matter as two independent variables, making 
their separate contributions to the total aesthetic effect of the 
work of art. Matter apart from form is never to be found, 
since what is matter in relation to more generalized form, is form 
with relation to other matter: a state, which is matter in its 
relation to the United States, is form in its relation to the coun- 
ties in that state. It is now necessary to show in detail how the 
two values are not really two, but one; that is, the apparently 
separate values of matter are really included in the values of 
form. 

Let us consider the distinction between the two as it appears 
on a first glance. If we contrast a painting with a drawing, or 
with a photograph of the painting, the painting seems to differ 
from both the drawing and the photograph in that it adds to the 
skeleton of form, the enriching material of color. Since any good 
painting is better than a photograph of it can possibly be, the 
value of the painting seems to be that of the form, as given in 
the bare outline, plus that of the material. In a similar way, 
when a symphony is transcribed for the piano, the loss in effect 
seems to be due to the subtraction of the orchestral color lent 
by the varying timbre of the different instruments. Again, 
when a prose synopsis of the ideas in a poem falls short in emo- 
tional quality of the poem itself, we are likely to suppose that 
what makes the difference is the loss of such sensuous effects as 
rhythm and rhyme. A moment’s reflection will show that all 
such suppositions are erroneous and that they arise from the 
improper limitation put upon ‘“‘form’’ of which we have already 
spoken. In the case of the poem, the ideas when prosaically 
expressed cease to be really the same ideas because every word 
has a wealth of associations, derived from its use in many con- 
texts, and all these associations enter into the content of the 
poetic idea when it is expressed by their aid. When it is stripped 
of associations and reduced to what can be given by abstract 
symbols, all its relations are disturbed and it ceases to be the 
same idea, the same ‘‘form.’’ The form is the living body, and 
the symbol is the bare skeleton. To translate 


““‘When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 
I summon up remembrance of things past”’ 


Ao nt Ee FPA S? OF yPATN TING 57 


-into ‘‘When I indulge in unuttered reminiscence”’ is not to give 
a new material setting to an already existing form; it is to lose a 
great part of the form itself. 

The same is true in music. The piano transcription of a 
symphony loses the qualities of orchestral color and other rela- 
tions which give the symphony its unique form, that is, make it 
what itis. A part of the form goes when the matter is changed. 
The sounds characteristic of the piano require a form of their 
own, one essentially different from that suitable to the orchestra. 
Otherwise, the best piano music would be that which most 
nearly reproduces the orchestral effect, and this is not the case. 
Chopin’s works for the piano are better than Liszt’s, and for the 
reason that Chopin’s effects are properly pianistic, while Liszt’s 
are conceived for the orchestra. It is the mark of an inferior 
symphonist that his works lose little if so transcribed, for it 
-shows that his orchestral forms were defective to begin with. 
In really good music, even the shift from one key to another 
makes a difference. Once more, form and matter are not two 
separable things, but only distinguishable aspects, like the length 
and the direction of a line. The form that is merely added to 
matter is mechanical; the matter that is merely added to form 
is redundance and ostentation. 

We find the same principle to hold in painting. The color 
which is added to the lines of a drawing or the tones of a photo- 
graph does not simply add a sensuous value to a form already 
given. It enters into the form itself, and the better the paint- 
ing the truer this is. There are, of course, paintings in which 
the form is really not painted but drafted, with color added as 
an ornament; such paintings, as for example those of David, 
lose comparatively little when photographed; but the fact con- 
stitutes a reflection upon the original quality of the work. To 
‘overlook the functional value of color and treat it as simple 
decoration is to misconceive the purpose of painting and to lose 
sight of its specific medium. It is to make painting an inferior 
substitute for sculpture, or else mere illustration. 

The reason why it is possible to photograph a painting at all 
is that different colors have different light-values, so that in a 
photograph they appear as varying shades of gray. A dark blue 
will be represented by a dark gray, a yellow by alight gray. In 
a painting, however, there are light and shadow effects, degrees 
of illumination, which are directly represented, as in chiaroscuro. 


58 INTRODUCTION 


In a photograph, these also are represented by grays, and the 
two correspondences overlap and obscure one another: a light 
gray may represent either a yellow or red, or a brightly lighted 
blue or green. In other words, two entirely different sets of 
relationships, that is, forms, are fused, and the specific quality 
of the ordering of the elements is lost. This means that a part 
of the form simply disappears, for the color is a part of the form 
and not an extraneous addition to it. 

The loss of form with loss of color is to be found in reproduc- 
tions of work so little colorful as that of Daumier. Daumier 
worked with sombre tones, qualified by light and shadow; but 
the effect of the light on the tones is extremely important. 
Along with the drawing, it gives the effect of mass, of both 
inertia and movement, the qualities which give Daumier’s work 
its power. When the double effects of light-contrasts and color- 
contrasts are reduced to a common denominator of gray, the 
massiveness of his forms is largely dissipated. With any painter 
whose effects depend upon elaborate or novel color-effects, with 
Titian, Rubens, Delacroix, Renoir, Cézanne, or Matisse, the 
impoverishment of form is enormously increased. This principle 
explains the futility of the universal practice in colleges, univer- 
sities and popular lectures of using photographs, even colored 
ones, to give an adequate idea of paintings themselves. 

In Renoir, drawing is accomplished largely by the use of color. 
Relations are indicated not, as with Ingres, by sharply defined 
lines of contact between surfaces on which the color is evenly 
laid, but by gradual transitions through intermediate tints, 
variously illuminated. The specific color-values are all-impor- 
tant for such indication of form, and without them the form is 
thin and tenuous. In Cézanne, the role of color is different, but 
no less important. He indicates contour not so much by varying 
degrees of illumination, as by modulations, that is, patches of 
color of varying quality, and since the light-values of the different 
colors are often indistinguishable, a photograph of a Cézanne is 
likely.to miss almost entirely the impression of massive reality 
conveyed by the original. With Matisse, color is of prime 
interest because of the very unusual chromatic combinations 
employed: the contrast is an important factor in the form, and 
the distortion of outline which may appear to be Matisse’s 
distinguishing feature is really in large measure a means of 
making the most effective possible use of color-contrast and 


Mase eet eC VA Le SORE ALN TUNG 59 


harmony. In a photograph, in which color cannot be repro- 
duced, these distortions appear arbitrary, that is to say, form- 
less. 

We have stated the general principle that form and matter 
are two sides of one reality, not two realities. Consequently 
when a painter makes of a particular type of form an end in itself, 
it is likely to degenerate into a formula, almost a mannerism, 
because the form of a great painter includes his own vision and 
temperament and these cannot be duplicated. An instance of 
such degeneration is to be found in the Florentine preoccupation 
with sculptural form, that is, with the representation of solidity. 
Even so eminent a painter as Leonardo fell a victim to this pre- 
occupation. The general design of his paintings was usually 
subordinated to the purpose of making figures appear as solid as 
possible. The result is one obvious type of “‘form,’’ which has 
been regarded by many critics of painting as aesthetic form 
par excellence, but which is almost a matter of ritual and, 
therefore, semi-mechanical. The overemphasis on solidity in 
Leonardo’s figures detracts from the aesthetic value; monotony 
replaces unity and variety. In many of the lesser Florentines, 
Luini, for example, the “‘form’’ of Leonardo, so understood, 
becomes no more than a piece of technical display, a trick. It 
is then a symptom of aesthetic poverty and one of the many 
varieties of academicism, to which the facile display of light 
effects in the academic imitators of Monet furnishes a more 
recent analogue. 

In the matter of relative richness of forms, we may compare 
Leonardo with Renoir. In Leonardo the effect of sculptural 
mass, of modelling, is preéminently achieved. Detail, including 
color, which does not contribute to the indication of contour, is 
almost ruthlessly eliminated. All the parts of the picture are 
located in space with reference to one another in masterly fashion, 
so that ‘‘form’”’ in this sense is realized in a high degree. But 
it is realized at the expense of many other forms which if intro- 
duced would bring out the qualities of the objects represented 
much more fully. Light, for example, is used chiefly in its role 
of emphasizing shape and solidity, and consequently seems rela- 
tively abstract, artificial. Relation of principal figure to back- 
ground is usually schematic rather than organic. In Renais- 
sance times, the full wealth of natural appearance by which man 
and nature came to be integrated into a single organism was 


60 PND RO DUCHLOW 


overlooked. Leonardo’s work, like that of many other artists of 
his time, shows in consequence impoverishment of both form 
and matter. 

Renoir was of another period of time, of a different tempera- 
ment, and he had different interests—and we see those facts in his 
work. He lived after naturalism and impressionism had explored 
the resources of the actual world, after man had been seen as a 
part of nature, and technical means had been found for showing 
him in that relationship. Renoir’s use of color, both impression- 
istic and individual, is the chief means to this end. It makes 
apparent the continuity of all the parts of his pictures at the 
same time that it adorns and vivifies them. His more extensive 
repertoire of forms and his richer material texture, go hand in 
hand: he could paint more detail because he could make a more 
comprehensive synthesis than Leonardo. Tosuppose Leonardo’s 
form greater than Renoir’s form is therefore a sign of the same 
kind of superficiality as that which confuses rhetoric with 
sublimity. 

This is not to say that Leonardo is rhetorical in the same sense 
as Guido Reni, Giulio Romano, or Luini. But his work too often 
reveals that he was fundamentally a scientist preoccupied with 
what was, in essence, a scientific problem. He perfected one 
kind of formal organization to the extent that his pictures tend 
in the direction of formula-working, and this always partakes of 
the nature of rhetoric. In contrast, Renoir’s work shows that 
he was first and always an artist, keenly alive to the ordinary 
affairs of life. He saw them comprehensively in natural, human 
values, and he let himself go in putting down the astounding 
numbers of forms that life had shown to him. 

The fact that any single type of organization if exaggerated 
becomes mechanical, may again be illustrated by Rembrandt. 
With him, chiaroscuro is in very great measure the agent of 
design and modelling, and often with great success. He too, 
however, occasionally fell into the error of making something 
which is valuable as a means an end in itself, and when he did 
so the results are as disastrous as such results invariably are. 
In the famous ‘‘Old Woman Cutting her Nails,”’ the effect of light 
is so exaggerated that we have what is essentially melodrama. 
It is striking but cheap, the sort of thing that suggests academi- 
cism animated by ingenuity rather than imagination animated 
by genius. There is ‘“‘form,’’ no doubt, but it approaches peril- 


Teel ot Cea AU no OR PADN TING 61 


ously close to the forms thatare manufactured with a lathe, and 
these are discoverable in great profusion in the work of Rem- 
brandt’s imitators. 


VI. PLASTIC ART AND DECORATION 


We know that it is by means of form that the artist gives 
expression to his essential grasp, perception, or vision of the 
world. In addition, any work of art has also an immediately 
agreeable quality of its own, apart from the interest of what is 
presented, and this is its decorative quality. We have already 
shown that decoration contributes to both the unity and the 
variety of a painting. Decoration is also something entitled 
to an aesthetic existence in its own name. The brilliance of 
color which satisfies the desire of the eye for stimulation, the 
graceful pattern which we find in the panelling of a wall, the 
designs on china, in an Oriental rug, are all intended to please 
without suggesting or representing anything other than them- 
selves. Let us consider the way in which decorative, ornamental 
quality is added to pictures in which there is also expressive form. 

It would be a mistake to suppose that decorative quality 
attaches preéminently either to the matter or the form of a pic- 
ture, in the widest sense of these words. Expression, or expressive 
form, and decoration are the two, relatively, independent vari- 
ables, and into each of them both matter and form enter. The 
difference is that in expression the use of form and matter is 
subsidiary to presentation, while in decoration the painter need 
consider nothing but the relation of color, line, space, mass and 
so on, to other color, line, space, mass. But this does not affect 
the principle that adornment is as much a matter of form as it 
is of material. Just as the treatment of expression resolved itself 
into a discussion of form, so also does the treatment of decoration. 

The pleasure we take in decoration seems to be of the same 
nature as the simple pleasure of health. Disease is maladjust- 
ment, it is the failure of our physical faculties to maintain an 
equilibrium. When equilibrium is restored, we have a sense of 
general well-being, which suffuses all our special activities. In 
it there is nothing so momentous that it thrills or exalts us 
acutely, but it is a necessary background to our more intense 
experiences, if these are to be satisfactory. We may say that 


62 PN PRO DOr ON: 


expression corresponds to our specific powers or interests, and 
decoration to our general organic welfare. Decoration is thus 
also expression. It is the manifestation of the less individual 
and personal part of ourselves, the part which is more nearly 
common to all men. 

In plastic art, decorative quality is a matter of simple design, 
balance, rhythm, pleasing combination of colors, and soon. All 
these factors enter also into expressive form; but their function 
as decoration must be discriminated from the part they play in 
representing an objective world. The detail in a picture organ- 
izes in reference to a focal point, often, but not always, close to 
the centre. The reason is that balance of design contributes to 
equilibrium; it keeps the eye from feeling a tendency to stray 
outside the frame of the picture, and so promotes stability. In 
exploring the surface, the eye prefers to travel approximately 
equal distances to right and to left, and this is a part of our 
general preference for rhythmic activities. When rhythm is 
halted, things seem to be out of gear and we are uncomfort- 
able. 

Rhythm is a form of periodicity, a repetition at intervals, and 
we crave it insatiably in all forms of art. It appears in the work 
as a whole and again in the subdivision of a total organization 
into partial units or organizations, resembling the whole in gen- 
eral character, but differing in detail. The two towers of a 
Gothic cathedral which stand at the sides of the front of the 
building, frame in its facade and form the balance which con- 
tributes to equilibrium. Although usually alike in general plan, 
the towers are not exact replicas of each other, but differ enough 
to offer novelty to the mind as it turns from one to the other. 
If either were so entirely different from the other that the con- 
trast outweighed the similarity—if for example, one of the 
towers of the cathedral at Rheims were replaced by an incon- 
gruous obelisk or a pyramid—the unity of the whole would 
be gone, and with it the aesthetic effect. Significant variation 
would disappear in the presence of radical incongruity, and the 
two elements in the relationship would not set each other off, 
but would, as we say, kill each other. The same principle applies 
to painting. The masses on either side of the centre should 
have relations to each other that contribute to the sense of 
balance; not mechanically or without variation, but not with such 
a degree of variation as to obscure their essential functions. 


Pet etre ba Vis Ul ioe OP ir ACDONSE UNG 63 


Mere repetition is tedious because it diminishes variety and 
offers inadequate stimulation, but if there is to be rhythm or 
symmetry there must be some sort of generic sameness between 
the elements balancing each other. That is, a number of ele- 
ments satisfy the demand for adequate stimulation of our senses, 
and these varied elements go well together, that is, unify into an 
organic whole. 

The most general principle involved is that of unity in mul- 
tiplicity: our preference for curved over straight lines means 
that a straight line is usually too much of the same thing, and 
that frequent change of direction supplants monotony by 
variety. In a painting the varied elements form a_ general 
pattern, and into this the details must fit in a way that unity 
results. This is in no sense a formula, because it leaves room for 
almost indefinite variation when applied. Between the design or 
organization of the picture as a whole, and the smallest organiza- 
tions that enter into it, there may be an indefinite number of 
intermediate organizations. Asa rule, the more intrinsic inter- 
est we find in the organizations that serve as units in the com- 
plete structure, the less need there is for intermediate stages of 
unification. 

The decorative forms in a painting may be literally innumer- 
able, in that every element—color, line, space—that makes up the 
forms themselves may be interrelated with one another to pro- 
vide an added aesthetic effect. This function of the color, line, 
space, is something over and above their function as constituent 
elements of the form which makes up the structure of the objects 
depicted. Experience enables the spectator to abstract these 
decorative elements and determine whether or not the relation 
of their constituents to each other is such that they unify into a 
distinct decorative form, or whether the relations are so diffuse 
that the elements serve as merely isolated sensory stimulants 
and are really formless. When they enter into forms we see the 
variety and unity which gives them a distinct art-value in them- 
selves as units in the general plastic form of the painting. If 
the formal relation is absent, unity fails and we see only variety, 
formlessness, the inferior aesthetic significance of the thing that 
does not hang together. 

On the other hand, a painting may have these decorative 
elements as distinct forms and still be of little value. A paint- 
ing which attains to the level of great art is one in which the 


64 INT RODUEC FLOW 


structural elements and the decorative elements unify into a 
plastic form which is satisfying by the very reason of the perfect 
fusion of all of its elements. If the decorative forms do not 
merge with the structural ones to make a unified whole, the 
painting sinks to the level of mere decoration and suffers cor- 
respondingly in the aesthetic power of its plastic form. Many, 
if not most, of the paintings in the annual exhibitions of the 
academies owe their appeal to the decorative use of color and 
line; and facile technical accomplishment, almost totally devoid 
of plastic significance, is crowned with prizes and popular 
approval. 

There is another class of decoration which attains to a much 
higher level as art, but which is still far from first-class. Here 
we find a special skill in organizing decorative elements into rich 
and distinctive forms which merge to some extent with the 
structural elements. But when we abstract the respective ele- 
ments, decorative and structural, we see that the structural form 
is of varying degrees of thinness. Almost all of Botticelli’s work 
comes within this category. In his famous painting, “Spring” 
and also in his ‘Birth of Venus,’’ we find a marvellously fluid, 
graceful line winding in and around all the objects and making 
a succession of patterns which add to the charm of the line. 
But when we look for equivalent value in the other forms which 
make up the total plastic quality of the paintings, we see only 
thinness. In other words, the facile, extraordinary, almost flam- 
boyant decorative forms are accompanied by so little structural 
plastic substance, that we look upon the paintings as primarily 
high-grade decorations which cannot be considered seriously as 
works of great art. A step further toward fusion of the two 
elements is found in the work of Rubens, in which, although the 
decoration is what we see first, there is usually a solid substruc- 
ture of other plastic elements with which the decoration merges 
sufficiently to give a composite plastic form of distinction and 
power. But it is only when we reach the highest levels of art, 
as we find them in Giotto, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Rem- 
brandt, Cézanne, and Renoir, that the decorative forms and the 
structural forms are so completely fused that the paintings func- 
tion as perfect unities, wholly satisfying as plastic forms. 

It seems to us that the distinction between the two classes of 
art, designated respectively classic and baroque, is due entirely 
‘to the preponderance of either the structural or the decorative 


* 


Poet irk Graven Lies OFT PATN TIONG 65 


elements. Insculpture, Michel Angelo is, in this sense, baroque, 
and the best Egyptian sculpture of about 2500 B.c., is classic. 
In Michel Angelo’s famous statue of ‘‘Moses’”’ in the Church of 
S. Pietro in Vincoli at Rome, we find a preoccupation with deco- 
ration so great that it detracts from the obviously solid and truly 
sculptural character of the work as a whole. In the Egyptian 
sculptures of the period named, especially those represented in 
the De Morgan Collection ia the Louvre, there is a three-dimen- 
sional sculptural treatment of great solidity in which the decora- 
tive elements are very much in abeyance. The effect of these 
Egyptian statues is one of unalloyed satisfaction, of deep peace; 
but in Michel Angelo’s work the satisfaction is disturbed and 
often abolished by the tinge of ostentation suggested by the orna- 
mental details. For the same reasons, El Greco, in spite of all 
his great command of plastic means, never leaves us undisturbed 
in that realm of peace that we occupy when we look at a painting 
by Giotto, Giorgione, Titian, Rembrandt, Renoir or Cézanne. 


Vil OUALCTITY: EN PAINTING 


In every work of art there is something which fixes its degree 
of goodness or badness, and which eludes description in words. 
The work may have the indispensables of variety and unity 
and its forms may be clean-cut and readily placed in known 
categories. A poem may offer good ideas, rhyme, rhythm 
and consonance; a symphony may show a good use of melody, 
counterpoint and harmony; a painting may reveal skill in the 
use of line, color, modelling, balance, rhythm, all fused into a 
good design; yet the poem, the symphony or the painting may 
still fall short of greatness. In other words, there is in every 
work of great art a pervasive and subtle quality which defies 
analysis and for the recognition of which no rules are adequate. 
The term that seems best to hint at this indescribable something 
is the word ‘‘quality,’’ used in the eulogistic sense. 

Attempts to describe quality, in the sense here employed, 
usually result in little that is convincing. But that quality does 
exist and that its existence is recognized, is shown by the use of 
the terms, ‘‘first-rate,’”’ ‘‘second-rate,”’ ‘‘tenth-rate,’’ applied to 
various degrees of goodness in nearly everything in life. Above 
the level of superiority that can be demonstrated objectively 


66 INTRODUGTION 


and upon technical grounds, for example, the traits that make 
a five-dollar cravat differ from a half-dollar one, or a painting 
by Picasso superior to one by Redfield—above these levels we 
attain to a nebulous atmosphere. In criticism of the finer kind 
required to discriminate between ‘‘The Assumption”’ by Titian 
and ‘‘La Belle Jardiniére’’ by Raphael, no words can adequately 
tell the whole story. Ultimately it is the native sensitivity and 
the funded mass of experience, providing an infinite number 
of forms in subtle relationships, that shed illumination to the 
person thus equipped. Even though the quality is indefinable 
in words, it is not recondite and it can be at least adumbrated 
sufficiently to enable one to follow the clues given. In ‘‘The 
Egoist’’ by George Meredith, this adumbration is successfully 
achieved through the musings of Dr. Middleton as he sips his 
after-dinner glass of old port. Nothing he says about the wine 
itself would enable a reader who lacked Dr. Middleton’s tem- 
perament and experience to participate in his pleasure. But by 
a skillful use of words and phrases relating chiefly to life in 
general, there is suggested a whole series of associations that 
penetrate to the intrinsic meaning of things in their aesthetic 
aspects, and from these hints the reader constructs the atmos- 
phere which gives the setting of Dr. Middleton’s enjoyment of 
the wine. In other words, Meredith’s artistry builds up a form 
which allowes a sensitive reader to reconstruct from his own 
resources an experience that enables him to appreciate the 
quality of the wine in the subtle essences of what makes that 
quality what it is. 

Such is the problem of a writer who would attempt to convey 
to others a clear idea of the distinctive content that endows a 
painting by Giotto, Giorgione, Titian, Renoir or Cézanne with 
that quality which belongs to the very greatest artists. There are 
objective facts, color, line, space, which experience enables the 
spectator to perceive as distinctive forms which yield aesthetic 
satisfaction. But the forms themselves will have little signifi- 
cance except as decorative patterns or as units carrying the 
values of represented subject matter, unless the spectator has 
within himself the spark of life which makes those forms living 
realities capable of setting in vibration feelings akin to those 
which the artist had when he painted the picture. 

This ultimate dependence of aesthetic appreciation upon some- 
thing which must be felt, and cannot simply be thought, is the 


Peer re mAs ee PP AUTON TNC 67 


final proof of the affinity between art and instinct. Every 
instinct confers upon its possessor a specific sensitiveness. It 
makes him aware of distinctions which for another may not exist, 
and in making him aware of them, it causes him to be moved to 
emotion by them. The word “‘sensitive’’ ordinarily covers the 
meanings of both distinction and emotion. Amorousness finds 
attractions invisible to the cold in temperament, resentfulness 
discovers causes for anger to which the man of milder disposition 
is blind, the compassionate are moved to pity by what may leave 
others indifferent or even amused. In a similar way, the sense 
of beauty distinguishes between grades of ‘‘quality,’’ and finds 
the distinction important, when those who lack it are oblivious 
of any difference, and consider it of‘no importance if it is pointed 
out to them. In the final analysis it is a matter of interest, and 
interests, as we have seen, are themselves determined by our 
instincts. The distinction between quality and its absence can 
be illustrated but not analyzed to its ultimate constituents. 
We must keep in mind that it is not a separate type or depart- 
ment of value but a difference between degrees of merit in the 
values already described, that is, in drawing, color, composition, 
plastic unity. Quality in painting is merely another name for 
the successful use of the. plastic means and what these plastic 
means are can be objectively demonstrated. The degree of 
quality constitutes the artist’s rank. 


CEVA Porn. 


ART AND MYSTICISM 


WE have seen that the aesthetic emotion is something which 
is moving, which must be experienced, cannot be proved and 
cannot be communicated to other people of different endow- 
ment. In other words, the aesthetic experience is of a mystical 
character.* 

Mysticism is a sense of union with something not ourselves. 
It is felt to be intensely real even though it cannot be demon- 
strated to anyone lacking the mystic’s sensibility. In its sim- 
plest form, it is found in the understanding that we have of 
those whom we know and sympathize with, and it is lacking in 
our feelings towards those who are strangers to us. Mysticism 
divines a kindred animation, a will, a consciousness in what 
appears to the non-mystic as alien or indifferent. In it, the 
barriers which ordinarily shut in our independent existence 
appear to dissolve, the self to expand, and our life to become con- 
fluent with another and a wider life in which we find our true 
self. It is a participation in an experience in which our own 
individuality is absorbed and carried along like a drop of water 
in a stream. 

The sense of union with our environment depends directly 
upon the degree with which such an environment encourages 
and codperates with our wishes. We can do nothing without 
some degree of codperation on the part of things about us: we 
need air to breathe, food to eat, light to see, and the means to 
satisfy our instincts, affection, anger, self-assertion. Ordinarily, 
however, the world compels us to circumvent obstacles, offer 
inducements, persuade indifference; in consequence, the sense of 
an alien world is rarely banished. Even the most cheerful 
people have, at times, the feeling of being alone, of being shut 
up in themselves. Those great agents of isolation—frustration 
and grief—are the most powerful deterrents to the mystical out- 
going of ourselves in the world. 


* Laurence Buermeyer, ‘The Aesthetic Experience,’ pp. 142-155. 


POR Ee ANGLE Ovi Y pot aL lo 69 


But there are times even in ordinary experience when every- 
thing seems as by a miracle to forward the causes in which we 
are interested. At such times, the painful contraction of the 
frontiers of the self is at least in part abolished. When every- 
thing conspires to give us what we want, everything appears to 
be a part of ourselves and the sense of isolation falls away. We 
are conscious of an immediate expansion of our individuality, 
and this expansion, when vividly and profoundly felt, is the 
same thing as mysticism. To come home from abroad, to 
exchange an environment of strange customs for the ease of 
movement and comprehension which the familiar always offers 
us, is likely to be an experience tinged with mysticism. In the 
experience of falling in love, when the thoughts, the feelings, the 
desires, are met and answered, the self dissolves into a larger 
and richer existence. In all human experiences, in so far as 
there is truly harmony, the self is expanded, and the mystical 
emotion appears. 

We can now understand why art and mysticism should tend 
to come together and coalesce. The world of art is a world 
which has been made by human beings for the direct satisfaction 
of their wishes. It is the real world stripped of what is mean- 
ingless and alien and remoulded nearer to the heart’s desire. 
Whatever man does of his own free will and for pleasure, is art 
in some degree; natural objects, however, discourage as often 
as they encourage free activity, and many of our creations, the 
objects made for our own use, liberate only a small part of our- 
selves. The material things of life and the contrivances by which 
material ends are achieved thus remain impotent to evoke our 
profounder and more personal emotions. Deeper harmonies can 
be set up only by objects embodying feeling and imagination, as 
well as inventiveness. It is these deeper harmonies, frustrated 
by our life in a world so indifferent to our feelings, that art sets 
in vibration. Through the expressive form, embodied in art, 
the spiritual interests which we have in the world are immedi- 
ately stimulated and satisfied and the imperfect expressiveness 
or responsiveness of material objects is supplemented and height- 
ened. In consequence, the world of art is felt to be endowed 
with the independent and yet responsive life which we always 
attribute to what answers to our feelings. Even the decorative 
quality of pictures increases their mystical effect in that it 


enables us to perceive readily, fully, and agreeably, and thus 
6 


70 DNARO DW Garb ow 


encourages a harmony between ourselves and what is before us. 
In this, it contributes to the mystical effect. 

We have mysticism at its height when the harmony between 
the self and the world, is taken as the key to all experience, when 
everything is felt to be full of life, and at heart one with ourselves. 
Then the indifference or lifelessness of most of the world is felt to 
be no more than illusion, and the mystic feels that he sees beneath 
appearances to the reality underlying them. The artists who are 
mystics in this sense are the mystics par excellence, and we find 
them in such painters as El Greco, Claude and Cézanne. In El. 
Greco we have the Christian’s mysticism, of a world dominated 
by supernatural forces. He reveals the pervasive life that the 
Christian mystic finds in all human experience. El Greco uses 
nature as a symbol to show the Christian’s fears, struggles, aspi- 
rations, defeats and triumphs, all vitalized with the artist’s 
intensity. In Claude, we are nearer naturalism, but nature is 
still humanized. Claude painted landscapes, but they are 
romantic landscapes interfused with something close to human 
life. In Cézanne, nature ceases to be the mere vehicle it was in 
Claude and becomes interesting intrinsically. Its vitality is its 
own. Cézanne takes us out of ourselves more completely than 
Claude, who takes us out of ourselves only to show us ourselves 
again in a different form. 

Mystical effects, like others in art, may be counterfeited. In 
such a painter as Bécklin, we find an exaggerated mysticism, a 
mysticism which is literary rather than plastic. Its effect 
depends not upon plastic form, but on specious technical devices 
and in consequence its symbolism seems cheap and melodramatic. 
In the American painter, Arthur B. Davies, there is the same 
miscarriage of intention, and a lack of command over plastic 
means results in literary effects that amount to mere senti- 
mentalism. Painters of that type are but feeble purveyors of 
the mysterious and transcendental because they lack the properly 
plastic force which would make of their poetry a substantial 
reality. 


GEN Pra Vil 


SUMMARY 


In the preceding chapters, an attempt has been made to show 
that human nature, from which art springs, also determines its 
forms and sets its standards. In the following chapters we 
shall consider systematically the means at the painter’s disposal 
and the success or failure of particular painters in their employ- 
ment of these means. As a preliminary, we may summarize a 
few of the cardinal points of the foregoing discussion in order 
to emphasize what qualities in plastic art are needed if it is to 
play its proper role in giving satisfaction to human desires. 

The relation of art to instinct is shown in the immediately 
satisfying character of art; to see adequately is an intrinsically 
satisfying experience, and plastic art is the means by which the 
experience becomes accessible to us. The artist saves us from 
the plight of having eyes and seeing not; that is, to have an 
eye systematically open to what is visually appealing is possible 
only if we have learned the artist’s lesson. Thus does art 
educate our interest in perceiving the world. 

The world which we perceive has in it many things, color, 
shapes, and lines, that may exert a natural charm. The colors 
of a sunset, the lines of a range of mountains, a ship, an auto- 
mobile, even a piece of furniture, may have an aesthetic quality, 
and this simple quality is probably the germ of the aesthetic 
interest in its full development. It is the analogue of what we 
have called ‘‘decoration,”’ the immediate agreeableness of cer- 
tain sensations and arrangements of sensations. Inaworkof art, 
however, this “‘‘a priori’ beauty,’’ as Bosanquet calls it, is sup- 
plemented by an expressive form. An object is more than a 
pattern of lines and colors; it is an individual thing, and its 
form, as we have seen, is what gives it individuality and sig- 
nificance. Its significance may reside in its appeal to our more 
specific instincts, or it may be due to the realization of mass and 
space, of the qualities common to all material objects. In either 
case, the particular colored and patterned object takes on a 


72 INSGR ODUIG ELON 


more universal appeal, and moves us not only by what it is, but 
by what it suggests and embodies. Obviously, the greatest sat- 
isfaction is possible from an object which combines these decora- 
tive and expressive interests and in which what is expressed is 
not only the universal qualities of the natural world, but human 
values also. To create an effective design of line and color is 
something; if line and color are made instrumental to massive- 
ness, to distance, to movement, that is an important addition; 
if the dynamic masses in deep space are so composed and inter- 
preted as to render the spirit of place in landscape, as with 
Claude or Constable, of religious elevation, as in Giotto, of 
drama and power, as in Tintoretto, of poignant humanity, as in 
Rembrandt, the total result attains or approaches the highest 
summits of artistic achievement. 

Another important consideration is that each of the arts has 
its individual medium, and the forms and human values which 
it can realize depend upon the medium employed. Every art 
inevitably loses some of the values of the real world, because 
stone, paint, sound, or words can each represent or indicate only 
a portion of our concrete experience. The artist who lacks a 
sense of what his medium can do, and tries to incorporate into 
his art the effects appropriate to other arts, injures the 
aesthetic effect of his work. The painter must render his 
human values in plastic terms; he must make an object or situa- 
tion move us by its line, color, and indicated spatial relations. 
Literature and music have duration in time; consequently, rela- 
tions to what has happened or is going to happen are a legitimate 
source of aesthetic effect. But the content of a painting is all 
simultaneously present, and it cannot properly be eked out by 
past or future; hence the futility of narrative, or of what pass 
for “‘moral’’ appeals (as in Millet) in plastic art. It is impos- 
sible to put in words the criterion of plastic embodiment, to give 
a formula for distinguishing between what is and what is not 
properly integrated in the visible form of a picture. But a cul- 
tivated sensibility will discriminate between the pictorial realiza- 
tion of the values of actual experience, such as we have them in 
Titian or Giotto, and a recourse to literature such as that of 
which Delacroix was habitually guilty. 

The achievement possible to any artist depends upon the 
command he has over his medium, though there is no precise 
correspondence between this command and his final rank as an 


SUMMARY 73 


artist. Manet was one of the supreme painters, from the point 
of view of technical mastery, but he was by no means an artist 
of the rank of Giotto or Giorgione. What is meant by mastery 
of medium may be clearly seen if we compare Manet’s work 
with that of a very inferior man, Meissonier, who was a very 
competent craftsman but not an artist. He could give a very 
accurate detailed rendering of any material object or scene; 
but his work is totally devoid of any personal feeling or vision 
and is intolerably diffuse and feeble simply as painting. Noth- 
ing in it suggests that he saw things in the terms that paint 
could render: the distinction between essential and irrelevant 
had no meaning forhim. Manet’s skill in the use of paint elim- 
inated what is plastically adventitious, and he had a feeling 
for what in the object represented will go into the medium of 
paint. It is this ability to feel the object depicted in terms of 
the medium employed which is the sine qua non of any kind of 
artistic achievement. 

We are all familiar with the corresponding gift in literature. 
A man may command a good vocabulary and write grammati- 
cally; but if his phrase is never terse or pregnant, if he cannot 
tell when to elaborate and when to pack many ideas into a 
few words, if he has no sense for the metaphors underlying 
words, the meanings that cannot be put into a dictionary, he has 
no more style than a set of equations or a table of logarithms. 
In other words he is incapable of making words do what they 
can, and is, therefore, not an artist. Similarly, a competent 
painter of illustrations may be incapable of making paint do 
what zt can do. He is then nothing but an animated color- 
camera. 





Book II 


THE ELEMENTS OF PAINTING 


Te ee 


i % vA a iyi ¥\ v/s 


ea 
' 





FOREWORD 


THE RAW MATERIALS OF PAINTING 


ALL the knowledge about the visible world obtainable through 
the sense of sight is that it is a flat surface made up of a patch- 
work of colors. The supposition that we see depth in space in 
the real world, that objects are at varying distances from us, 
comes to us, not from sight, but from experience which has 
involved the use of other senses and faculties. That is, we have 
learned that the muscular exertion required to pass through 
the spatial interval between ourselves and a given object, varies 
with variations in the appearance of the object. Hence, when 
we perceive vague or indistinct outlines in an object, we sup- 
pose it to be far away. In paintings, our perception of space 
is attained by our recognition of the symbols which the painter 
employs. If an object is remote, the symbols are, among 
others, a smaller size and an indistinct outline; a nearer object 
in the same line of vision overlaps one more remotely placed; 
slight differences in depth are correlated with differences in 
illumination: the curve of a cheek, the prominence of a shoulder, 
a contour of any kind, may be indicated by a continuous transi- 
tion in light and shadow; very remote objects tend to look blue. 
In short, the painter portrays spatial depth by the symbols of 
perspective, of illumination, of color, and these qualities we 
judge by reference to the symbols which we have learned from 
experience with the world of real objects. 

The painter’s representation of the world is achieved by 
modifying a flat surface by means of line and color. It is by 
manipulation of these means that objects take on the appear- 
ance of different sizes, relative positions to each other in space, 
light, shadow, contour, and flatness or solidity. But these 
means are only the raw materials of art, and unless they are 
used for some purpose other than mere reproduction of objects, 
they fulfill imperfectly the function of a camera and have, for 
art, no significance whatever. Indeed, command of means in 
painting is analogous to acquaintance with the words and 


78 TM EO EB  RoMi eR NS Ocb P ASIN betes 


grammar of a language, which enables a person to say some- 
thing, but by no means guarantees that he will have some- 
thing to say. For example, some of the most banal of contem- 
porary academic painters can portray accurate perspective, give 
an astounding illusion of three-dimensional solidity, or show the 
effect of light in moulding contour and modifying the visible 
color of things, with more technical skill than Giotto or Titian 
or Cézanne possessed. But with only this supreme technical 
mastery of means, the academic painter can no more produce a 
work of art than a newspaper reporter, whose vocabulary includes 
words unknown to Dante, can write a drama of epic significance. 
It follows that, while it is important to understand the material, 
the means, with which an artist works, that understanding 
enables us to see only the problems which he had to solve and 
the form taken by his handling of the technical means. The 
general tendency of academicians to base criticism of painting 
upon mere acquaintance with technical means is analogous to 
the literary criticism which would judge an author’s significance 
by his spelling and punctuation. 


Od FTA edd ee Dat | 


PLASTIC FORM 


THE word “‘plastic’’ is applied to something that can be bent or 
worked or changed into other forms than it has originally; and the 
things that a painter can work into various forms are line, color 
and space: these are the plastic means. | A painting is a work 
of art only when the means at the painter’s disposal are used 
in such a manner that an individual and distinctive conception 
of an experience, actual or imaginative, is conveyed to the 
spectator. It will show not a literal reproduction of an object 
but a definite idea embodying one or more human values. It 
will be neither a literary nor a moral value, but a value which is 
communicated to us directly and without the intervention of 
any other agency than the specific plastic means—line, color, 
space. Plastic form is the synthesis or fusion of these specific 
elements. To be significant, the form must embody the essence, 
the reality, of the situation as it is capable of being rendered in 
purely plastic terms. ) A painter’s worth is determined precisely 
by his ability to make the fusion of plastic means forceful, indi- 
vidual, characteristic of his own personality. 

Plastic unity is form achieved by the harmonious merging of 
the plastic elements into an ensemble which produces in us a 
genuinely satisfying aesthetic experience. Plastic form is sig- 
nificant, in the ultimate and highest sense, only when it is a 
creation: an expression of an individual human experience in 
forceful plastic terms. 

The most obvious plastic element is color. It has an aesthetic 
- value quite independent of its function of representing the sur- 
face color of real objects. Indeed, the aesthetic significance of 
color is the most difficult of all to judge and is the source of 
much confusion on the part of novices and even of advanced 
critics. The novice is subject to many pit-falls in this respect 
—the mere sensuous appeal of varying degrees of brilliance, 
individual preference for particular colors, unconscious com- 
parison with well-known objects of definite color content—all 


80 THE ELEMENTS OF PAINTING 


these standards are far from the aesthetic criterion which alone 
fixes the real status of color as one of the plastic means. Its 
importance in painting is neither imitative, merely sensuous, 
nor even primarily that of surface decoration: what it is, will 
be indicated in later chapters. 

Another of the primary plastic means is drawing—and here 
again reigns a confusion similar to that noted in connection with 
color. The novice looks for the type of drawing which is a 
replica of the way colored surfaces of real objects intersect to 
form line and contour. He forgets that the artist’s work is not 
to copy literally the lines and contours of objects, but to so 
select, modify and accentuate them that there emerges a creation, 
constituting his individual version of the object. His success is . 
a matter for aesthetic judgment and not for simple comparison 
with the original object. 

In the flat surface of a painting, color and line make up all 
the objects depicted. If there were no attempt to indicate the 
fullness of spatial depth, if objects were placed as flat repre- 
sentations on a single plane, color and line would be the only 
plastic elements required. But such a painting would have no 
aesthetic significance unless there was an arrangement of the 
colored and drawn masses into some sort of relation with each 
other; and this arrangement is termed composition. Even in 
the pattern of a carpet or wall paper, composition, in this sense 
of relations, is present. To have an aesthetic appeal, the dis- 
tribution of the elements in a pattern must have such a sequence 
of line and mass, a relation to each other, that they show an 
arrangement, an order, a balance which we find satisfactory to 
our sensibilities. Thus, mere pattern is the beginning of art 
expression in so far as it shows that the creator has chosen that 
particular arrangement in preference to others, physically pos- 
sible, but without as much aesthetic significance. In_other 


words, color and line have been Ee the result is 
= eee rae . 


een 


a design, a union of color and_line to nele aesthetic 


? esign is present when the color, the line, the compo- 


é€ 

sition, instead of being independently conceived, mutually 
affect one another and form a new unit. To alter any of these 
elements would disturb existing relationships and would destroy. 
that particular unity. Consequently, if a design is completely 
satisfying aesthetically it means that that particular arrange- 
ment of masses, that particular coloring, those particular shapes 


PUASTIC FORM 81 


and sizes of objects, harmonize better with each other than 
would another series of relationships between the various com- 
ponents of the design. And this principle of unity may be said 
o be the ideal according to which all paintings may be judged. 

[t he design of a picture consists of the general plot or handling 
of the various details, and it is the factor which should be upper- 
most in the mind of the person who wishes to discriminate the 
plastically essential from the irrelevant. Design in plastic art 
is analogous to the thesis of an argument, the plot of a novel, 
the general structure of a symphony, the ‘“‘point’’ of a story: 
that is, the feature or detail which assigns to each of the other 
elements its role, its bearing, its significance. 

The factor in design which first strikes our attention and 
produces the pleasure which holds us longest is rhythm. No 
plastic element in a painting stands by itself, but is repeated, 
varied, counterbalanced by other similar elements in other parts 
of the picture; and it is this repetition, variation and counter- 
balance which constitutes rhythm. Each of the plastic elements 
may form rhythms with like elements—line with line, color with 
color, mass with mass—and each of these rhythms may enter 
into relations with the rhythms formed by other plastic ele- 
ments. The simplest form of rhythm is that in which the 
bending of a line is matched by similar modification of another 
line. This may be a simple repetition, or it may take the 
form of lines meeting, intersecting and balancing, in which 
duplication plays a small part,\as in Poussin’s ‘‘ Arcadian Shep- 
herds.’’ ) Color may be likewise repeated, varied, balanced, in 
such a way that the rhythm is so rich, so pervasive and so 
powerful that it gives to the painting its chief characteristic, ‘as 
in Giorgione’s ‘“‘Concert Champétre,’’ or Renoir’s ‘‘ Baigneuses.’’ ) 
These rhythms of line, color, mass, space, permeate every part 
of the picture, fix the relation of each part to every other 
part, and form an ensemble which constitutes design, and there- 
fore plastic form, in its highest estate. When these various 
rhythms are most successfully related and fused, the effect upon 
our sensibilities is comparable to that produced by the harmoni- 
ous merging of chords, melodies, themes and movements in a 
rich symphony in music. 

To the experienced observer of paintings, it is the design, the 
plastic form, that is revealed at first glance, and determines 
whether or not the painting is worthy of further attention. 


82 THE ELE MEN DSO PAINTING 


The study of a painting consists in nothing more than the 
determination of how successfully the artist has integrated the 
plastic means to create a form which is powerful and expressive 
of his personality. Defects in design are revealed by ineffective 
use of line, color poor in quality or inharmonious in relations, 
inadequate feeling for space, stereotyped, formulated or per- 
functory use of means, overemphasis of one or more of the 
plastic elements. In short, plastic form is lacking when the 
halting, inadequate, unskilled use of the means fails to effect 
that unity which is indispensable in a successful work of art. 
Either the artist has nothing to say or he lacks the command 
of means to convey an idea in plastic terms. 

Painting which makes no attempt to portray spatial depth, that 
is, the third dimension, represents plastic form at its simplest. 
It may embody fluid graceful line, harmonious color, flat masses 
and surface space, all so composed that the relations establish 
plastic form of a high order, even though quite simple. It is 
true that scarcely any painting is absolutely flat, even that of 
the Byzantines or Persians: there is usually some indication 
that the different parts of the painting are not literally on one 
plane, as are the figures in arug. The objects almost invariably 
appear to be at varying distances from the spectator’s eye, 
though this effect may be achieved in ways other than by the 
utilization of perspective or deep space. In many Persian minia- 
tures, for example, the depiction of different scenes will be upon 
the same plane, each scene placed one above the other; thus a 
substitute for perspective is achieved. While the design in flat 
painting may be satisfying, such plastic forms remain compara- 
tively meagre and correspondingly deficient in reality. 

In general, if there were no depth, there could be no solidity, 
no rendering of planes one behind the other, as they exist in 
the world as we know it. It is obvious that to render the depth 
and solidity of objects, the illusion of deep space must be created 
by plastic means. In flat painting, in which objects can have 
only two dimensions, they can have no depth, cast no shadows, 
cannot bulge or recede, and cannot be felt to be solid. Color 
remains superficial, sequence of line is chiefly mere pattern, 
light is divorced from pattern and can play no role except to 
modify the quality of color, and composition is reduced to 
arrangement of objects above and below, to right and to left. 
But when deep space is conceived, color, line, composition and 


PeSeT UGe OREM Ip 2 iy 83 


design are endowed with new possibilities of individual and 
interrelated treatment, which increase greatly the painter’s 
power to create new and more complex plastic forms that move 
us by a multitude of realities not possible in merely flat painting. 
Plastic form and reality go hand in hand—that is, an attenua- 
tion of means results in a form which leaves out of account much 
of the actual quality of things which in art, as in the real world, 
moves us so deeply. When a painter uses any of the plastic 
means inadequately, the fullness, the richness of his work suffers 
to the extent of his lapse, for it is a characteristic of good art 
that it gives a reality more convincing, more penetrating, more 
satisfying than actual objects or situations themselves give. 
While it is true that painting which portrays spatial depth 1s, 
in general, more rich in plastic values than painting which 
approaches flatness, it is mof true that mere depth or solidity of 
objects is the factor which determines the relative worth of such 
paintings. It is possible to get an effect of depth and solidity 
by tricks of perspective or modelling, in which event the third 
dimension becomes mere virtuosity; instead of reality we get a 
specious unreality, more unreal than a frank two-dimensional 
pattern. Spatial depth and solidity of objects have aesthetic 
value only when they are achieved by plastic means harmoni- 
ously coérdinated with the other plastic elements; that is, when 
they function as elements in a unified design. Therefore, it is 
obviously absurd to judge the relative merits of two painters 
upon the success with which they render the illusion of a solid 
figure extending into deep space. For example, a figure by 
Renoir has not, generally, the solidity of a figure by Cézanne; 
such a figure would not enter harmoniously into the plastic form, 
the lighter, more delicate general design of the Renoir; Cézanne’s 
design conveys the effect of austerity and power, and anything 
but a solid figure would be a disturbing factor. In short, spatial 
depth and solidity are not to be judged by any absolute standard 
but only by their contribution to a unified plastic form. ; 
The merits of relatively flat painting and of three- dimensional 
painting which realizes solidity and spatial depth can be com- 
pared only when we observe how the artist has used color and 
light. One often sees paintings where color is merely laid on 
the surface like a cosmetic; it has the quality of tinsel, of some- 
thing added after the object has been constructed. Instead of 
increased reality we get an effect of falsity, of unreality, and 


84 THE ELEMENTS SOFARAIN TUNG 


the painting lacks organic unity. Color is usually not a property 
merely of the surface of objects as we perceive them in the real 
world. The red of an apple seems to spring from its depth, to 
go down to the body of the apple; we see it as a solid object and 
as a red object; the color is perceived as part of the structure 
of the apple, not as something laid on. In painting, the failure 
to include color in form reduces the degree of conviction carried 
by form, and makes the total effect relatively cheap, tawdry, 
unreal. 

Not less important than color, in attaining a convincing and 
real three-dimensional character, is the use of light and shadow. 
In painting thatis two-dimensional, light functions through modi- 
fication of hue or tint so that the shade of a color is partly 
determined by the light that falls upon it. In three-dimensional 
representation, solidity of an object is achieved by having the 
most light fall upon the point nearest to the source, from which 
there is a continuous gradation to deepest shadow. The swells 
and hollows are portrayed by means of the rise and fall of illu- 
mination. In other words, solidity is rendered by color and light 
correlated, and that correlation constitutes the modelling of 
forms. But it is obvious that this correlation makes possible 
another aesthetic effect; such use of color and light that they 
may each form independent and separate rhythmic designs which 
in turn form rhythms with the other plastic elements. For 
example, in Bellini’s “‘Sacred Conversation” the design made 
up of the light and shadow placed in various parts of the canvas, 
is one of the principal components of the plastic form: it is 
totally independent of the function of the light and shadow in 
giving indications of position and contour. Similarly, in Titian’s 
‘‘Man with the Glove,’’ the design formed by the light used to 
render the solidity of various parts of the head and hands, does 
much to organize the picture. In general terms, the artist has 
used a particular plastic means to portray the essence, the 
reality, of the subject and also to enrich and vivify as well as 
unify the design. 

The plastic element which determines the character of three- 
dimensional painting, is deep space and this is achieved by the 
use of perspective. It need not be literal perspective as we 
perceive it in the real world: it must be used plastically, that is, 
changed or adapted by the artist to particular needs. Per- 
spective conjoined with the modelling makes possible what is 


sousIO, 


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(85) 





Piero della Francesca (School) Arezzo 


This Fifteenth Century painting is one of the prototypes of modern design 
effected by means of contrasts and distortions. 


Analysis, page 402 


( 86 ) 





Picasso Barnes Foundation 


Similar to painting on opposite page in the use of line, color and 
space to effect design. 


( 87) 





Courbet Barnes Foundation 


( 88 ) 


PLASTIC FORM 89 


‘ 


termed ‘“‘space composition.” This is something over and 
above the third dimension achieved by the utilization of line, 
color, light and perspective to make an object appear solid. It 
is different from ‘‘composition,’’ as that word is ordinarily employed 


to describe the arrangement or distribution of masses in a paint-_ 


ing. Space-composition is such an arrangement of things in the 
depth of space that the intervals, back and forward as well as 
up and down and to right and left, are felt to have a pleasing 
relation to each other. We feel the intervals not primarily as 
three-dimensional qualities, as we do in perceiving solid objects, 
but as the space itself which surrounds those objects.) Space- 
composition moves us aesthetically when each object is.so placed 
in its particular position that we perceive that the space around 
the object has a definite relation to the space around each of 
the other objects, and that these spaces are arranged, that 
is, composed. If there were no objects there could be no 
space between them; hence space-composition involves both the 
objects and the intervals of space. It is the sequence of objects 
and spaces so ordered that they form a design which we perceive 
as a thing in itself.) Space-composition is successful when it 
enters into relation with the other plastic elements to give a 
plastic form which functions as a unified whole; in other words, 
when the painter has been so successful in suggesting planes 
receding, advancing and interacting with each other, that the 
whole series of spatial intervals between objects, as well as the 
objects themselves, interest or charm us. Space-composition 
contributes enormously to the reality of total effect, since in our 
commerce with the real world we not only see objects but move 
among them. We live in a world of space and we see objects 
in relation to remoter objects: a tree with a wall beyond it, a 
house against a background of hill or forest. Our mind is filled 
with these forms. When an artist enriches them with his 
deeper perceptions and feelings, and moulds them into designs 
richer than our unaided powers could construct, we share -his 
larger vision and deeper emotions. 

We have seen that plastic form is satisfactory when there 
exists an integration, a balance of its factors, that is, when 
they unify. As one progresses in the study of plastic art, a 
great variety of falls from plastic unity reveal themselves. A 
painter, unable to enter fully into his subject, to see it in its 
concrete fullness and with an eye to all its relations, or one with 


90 THE ELEMENTS OF PAINTING 


an insufficient command over all the plastic means, produces 
but an inadequate substitute for a unified painting. He may 
single out for emphasis some one feature and slight the others, 
treating them sketchily, perfunctorily or conventionally. When 
this happens, we have what is termed formula painting, and 
while often the parts treated are done very skillfully, the skill 
is mere virtuosity: the painter, no matter how adroit, is not 
genuinely an artist. Line, or light, or modelling, or perspective, 
or the relations with surrounding objects that enter into space- 
composition—any one of these may be accentuated to the point 
of submerging the other aspects of the object or situation. 
When this occurs there is no proper integration of the various 
plastic means and the result is comparative unreality. 

Intelligence guides us to reject as uninteresting what we find 
unreal: we cannot accept as real what we feel does not represent 
an object or situation in all its aspects, 7m tts concrete fullness. 
This principle, so true in real life, is equally true in all the forms 
of art. . For example, in poetry Swinburne’s spontaneity, variety 
and subtlety of rhythm produce an exceedingly brilliant effect. 
But the flow and surge of his verse is soon seen to conceal an 
inner emptiness; mere rhythm is made to serve for the imagina- 
tive grasp of the subject that should vary both the ideas and 
their expression by all the poetic means. This constant repeti- 
tion of rhythm without other poetic content becomes mere 
virtuosity. Verbal magic destitute of meaning constitutes 
unreality. In music, Berlioz and Liszt have a great command 
of orchestration, but their themes are almost invariably com- 
monplace and conventional, their ideas are thin, and the orches- 
tral dressing fails to conceal the essential triviality. Here again 
one factor is given an exaggerated role to cover up a lack of real 
substance, and the effect is one of showiness or melodrama, of 
unreality. 

The conception of plastic form, as integration of all the plastic 
means, will be used in this book as the standard and criterion of 
value in painting, and hence all the analyses and judgments 
that follow will be an illustration of its meaning. To clarify 
what is meant by integration of plastic means we may antici- 
pate the later discussion and consider Raphael as a striking 
example of inadequate plastic form. Raphael has often been 
looked upon as one of the greatest of all painters. He was 
undoubtedly a master of his medium and possessed extraordinary 


Pelee ae Cork Oar VE QI 


ability to put down what he had in mind. He had a great 
command over line, his ability to use light to indicate contour 
and to make a design was of a high order, and in space-compo- 
sition his gifts were unsurpassed. But these accomplishments 
were largely borrowed, his line and light from Leonardo, his 
space-composition from Perugino. His color is superficial and 
undistinguished in quality; it is thin, dull, sometimes garish, and 
it seems rather an after-thought in the design. His composition is 
almost invariably conventional; it has not the freshness and the 
inevitable fitness that we see, for example, in Giotto, so that for 
all the spaciousness and airyness of his pictures we never get 
the impression of a really original and powerful imagination at 
work. His borrowings he has made in some measure his own; 
but they are not sufficiently changed to indicate that they are 
really a creation of a strong personality and a distinct mind. 
His subject-matter lacks originality and is generally so sweet 
and soft that one feels that he saw things sentimentally and that 
they produced in him commonplace and rather trivial emotions. 
In other words, he had no vigorous personality to serve as 
the crucible in which the qualities of things should be fused 
and welded into a new form. The result is that his particular 
means remained disjoined from his conceptions as a whole, and 
his light, line, and space-composition stand out as isolated 
devices, as exploits of virtuosity. He did achieve a form of his 
own, and his great technical skill enabled him to attain marvel- 
lous results, but the efforts are often specious and the effects 
tawdry. = 

For examples’ of the use of plastic means so disintegrated as 
to be mere tricks or mechanical stunts, we may examine the 
picture by Guido Reni entitled ‘‘Dejaneira.’’ We find almost 
nothing expressive of the painter’s individual grasp of the sub- 
ject, and correspondingly there is no real synthesis of the plastic 
means employed. The design and composition are effective, 
but these are taken directly from Raphael and executed less 
competently. The impression of movement is rendered skill- 
fully, but it is so much overdone that it suggests histrionics rather 
than art. The color is without charm or originality, and is 
simply laid upon the surface. It is so little integrated in the 
design or plastic form that another set of colors might be sub- 
stituted with no damage to the total effect of the picture. What 
we have is a mere assemblage of devices without inner coherence 


Q2 THE (“EL BE MOEN DS & Ove ATIIN Tale 


and contributing to an effect that is conventional, strained, and 
exceedingly tawdry. 

The recognition of the balance or integration of plastic means 
which constitutes plastic form comes only from experience in 
looking at many kinds of painting. There can be no rules by 
which we can fix a degree to which variety and brilliance of color, 
elaboration of grouping, rhythm of line, etc., must be present, and 
then say that if any of these factors fall below such a point, there 
is overemphasis on the other factors. Colorists like Rubens and 
Renoir cannot be accused of overaccentuation of color because 
they realized other aspects of the world in plastic terms equally 
strong, so that it is clear that they did not conceive exclusively 
in terms of color. In the work of both of these painters we see 
significant line, movement, composition, effective spacing, both 
on the surface and in the third dimension. Color serves not 
as the only source of effect, but as an organizing principle. 
Renoir’s drawing, for example, is done in terms of color, and 
though the incisive line characteristic of Raphael or Leonardo 
is absent, the effects to which line contributes—movement, 
fluidity and rhythm—are rendered with great success. Although 
the kind and degree of solidity which we find in Leonardo, 
Michel Angelo or Cézanne is absent in Renoir’s figures, they do 
not seem vaporous or unreal. They have substance, mass, 
actuality, though not in the same manner and degree as do the 
figures in the work of painters whose primary purpose was » 

different. at 
~The way in which emphasis of one of the plastic means may 
be united with subsidiary but sufficient realization of the others 
is further illustrated in Rembrandt. He employed chiaroscuro, 
that is, a bright area surrounded by darkness: light surrounded 
by heavy shadow serves as the point of departure in most of 
his pictures. He avoids overemphasis of his special means by 
making the tones in connection with light function as color more 
powerfully than any colors of Leonardo or Raphael. In the 
portrait of ““Hendrickje Stoffels’’ and in that of ‘The Old Man’”’ 
(in the Uffizi), minute variations in the golden-brown light give 
a richer, more glowing and actually more varied effect than all 
the colors of the spectrum used by a lesser artist. When, as in 
the ‘“‘Unmerciful Servant,’’ Rembrandt introduces bright color 
the effect is one of marvellous depth, richness and fire. This 
same combination of economy of means and great effectiveness 


PLASTIC FORM 93 


is to be found also in his line and composition. In space-com- 
position, for example, the use of chiaroscuro narrowly circum- 
scribes the space at the painter’s disposal, yet in the ‘‘ Unmerciful 
Servant’”’ the effect of roominess achieved is comparable to the 
fine spatial effects of Perugino or Poussin. 

In general terms we may say that in painting, as in all other 
forms of art, whatever quality is selected as setting the dominant 
note must be ballasted and made real by being shown in a con- 
text of other qualities, and when this is not done the effect 
becomes conventional, cheap, tawdry, unconvincing, and unreal. 

The “‘reality’’ which we consider to be the essence of art-value 
in painting may be illustrated by reference to the subject-matter 
portrayed by the French painters, David and Delacroix. In 
David, there is constant recourse to stage-settings, poses, themes, 
reminiscent of classic antiquity. In Delacroix’s exotic, Byronic 
themes, there is a similar indication that the world in which we 
actually live is beneath the artist’s serious attention. In both 
cases we are conscious of an artificial or theatrical quality, and 
this conviction that the painters are playing a game or acting 
a part is not affected by the fact that the histrionics were doubt- 
less free from deliberate insincerity. What they portray of 
poignancy, pathos, tragedy, significance, existed in the world 
about them. If they did not find them there, we are justified 
in concluding that they did not know what they are, and that 
their portrayal of them is essentially a caricature, figments out 
of day-dreams. 

This condemnation of “‘classicism’’ or ‘‘romanticism”’ is not 
based upon literary considerations, but upon plastic ones: 
antiquarianism or sentimentalism betrays itself in limited and 
unoriginal command of plastic means. The painter does not 
really draw inspiration for his art out of his own personal experi- 
ence but depends upon other painters for the methods by 
which his pictorial effects are produced. David’s ‘‘classic’’ 
calm, or rather coldness, is due to a line which he took from 
Raphael and Mantegna and they took it from ancient sculp- 
ture. It is not something which the artist actually saw as a 
part of a personal and coherent view of real things, but a studio- 
device to which the qualities of color, mass, and space were 
added as an after-thought. These qualities do not really fuse 
with the line to produce an impression of reality, but remain 
adventitious, just as the “‘noble”’ or “‘distinguished’’ figures and 


‘ 


ra 
/ 


04 THE SEL ENMEN DSe Of PAT N DDN G 


situations painted remain strangers and phantoms in the world 
in which we actually live. 

The same is true of Delacroix. The stormy emotion, the 
exaggerated gesture and violent drama, are almost as spectrally 
unreal as David's “‘nobility,’’ and they mean the same inability 
to see the actual world about him. Delacroix does not seem so 
artificial either in subject-matter or in plastic quality as David, 
because romanticism was for him less a pose than classicism was 
for his predecessor, and because he did more to modify and 
reorganize what he took from others. His color represents an 
advance over Constable’s or Rubens’s in that he showed a degree 
of originality in the methods he took from them. Consequently, 
he seems more real, and so more interesting and a greater artist, 
than David. 

We realize how essentially fantastic David and Delacroix 
were when we compare them with later painters. The concern 
with actually existing scenes, persons, and situations made of 
Courbet and his successors the legitimate successors of Velasquez 
and Goya, in making us see the objective qualities of things, 
divested of the subjectivism that constituted the romanticists’ 
exhibited world of self. To sympathy with Courbet’s insight 
we owe the great painters of 1870— Manet, Monet, Degas, Sisley, 
Pissaro, Renoir, Cézanne—and the imaginative telling of the 
story of lifein areal world. Of that group, Renoir and Cézanne 
deal most objectively with the whole range of experience as 
men find it verified in themselves, free from the trifling, the 
insignificant, the preoccupation with theory, method, virtuosity, 
or personal vanity. If one looks beneath the dissimilarity of 
techniques, Renoir and Cézanne are seen as close kin in dealing 
with the fundamental, universal attributes of people and things. 
Both treated the familiar, every-day events that make up our 
lives. We see, feel, touch the particular quality that gives an 
object its individual identity. Each of the painters created a 
world richer, fuller, more meaningful than that revealed to our 
own unaided perceptions. Each mirrors a world we know by 
having lived in it, so vividly that we get a sense of going through 
an actual experience. Both are great artists because they make 
art and life one by convincing us of the truth and reality of 
what they see and feel and express. 

Cézanne, indeed, stands out as an unique figure among the 
painters of his time, if not of all time, because of the success of 


PLASTIC FORM 95 


his passionate impulse to penetrate into the forms and structures 
of things. His constant pursuit of reality, in order to grasp it 
and portray it in its essence, was akin to the zeal and thorough- 
ness of the investigator in science. Where Renoir found poetry 
and charm in everything, Cézanne found weight, mass, volume, 
texture, tactile qualities. He was critical and analytical, with 
a high intensity of mind and spirit in his search for facts by 
which to attain to the secret springs of form and structure. It 
Was a passion that mastered him, that made some of his work 
seem cold and stern and hard. The intensity of this passion 
explains the freedom from mere tradition, from the litter of 
academicism, that makes his mature work unique. It kept him 
faithful to his own vision, and produced the refinement that 
compels our attention to the significant, the momentous attri- 
butes of people and things, stripped of triviality and irrelevant 
detail. 

Only a power to merge thought and feeling, to engraft relevant 
emotion upon substantial fact, to lend to an object his own life, 
kept such a personality out of the realm of science and within 
that of art. The spirit of science scarcely emerges as we live 
with him in the stirring adventure he fairly revels in as he works 
out forms, textures, and designs in the world he so magnificently 
transforms for us. We-see only the forms constructed of radiant, 
singing color, the melodious spaces, the harmonious, rhythmic, 
decorative design, the fitting quality and degree of emotion. He 
welds reality, truth, and beauty into an experience which we 
feel to be a reflection of the world, created by sheer magic out of 
the materials we live among every day. It is a world full of 
human interests, of enlivened and enriched associations, with 
their mysterious moving qualities of depth, majesty, calm 
infinity. It is these and similar qualities ever present in our 
commonplace world that he animates for us with a pervasive 
rhythmic beauty and vitality. Cézanne’s work has a power of 
self-assertion, an arrestingness, which always compels attention 
and in time makes the work of painters who lack his grasp of 
reality seem comparatively savorless and tiresome. 


CHA POUER Tt 


PLASTIC FORM AND SUBJECT-MATTER 


WE have said that a painting is to be judged by its plastic 
form and not according to its subject-matter; but that does not 
mean that the appeal of the painting, as a concrete reality, is 
not due in part to what is shown init. It is impossible to main- 
tain that the value of subject-matter and plastic values are in 
any absolute sense separable. It is true that relevant judg- 
ment or criticism of a picture involves the ability to abstract 
from the appeal of the subject-matter, and consider only the 
plastic means in their adequacy and quality as constituents of 
plastic form. In that sense, a picture of a massacre and one of 
a wedding may be of exactly the same type as works of art. 
We abstract from each the form which is made up of the plastic 
elements—line, color, space, composition—and determine the 
quality of that plastic form as an organic, unified fusion of those 
elements. Until one has formed by study and long experience 
the habit of seeking the plastic form, the intrinsic appeal or 
repulsion of subject-matter itself will constitute the chief pleasure 
or displeasure afforded by pictures. Many painters who are 
unable to master the plastic means to create an individual 
expression, seek to awaken emotion by portraying objects or 
situations which have an appeal in themselves independent of 
an artistic conception or rendering of them. This attraction 
may be dramatic, sentimental, religious, erotic or what not, but 
whatever it is, it sins against the canon of ‘‘reality,’’ that is, com- 
plete integration of the plastic means. A popular vote for the 
best painting at academy exhibitions always results in the 
selection of a picture representing a mother and child, or a nude, 
or a pretty landscape, even though the one chosen has no quali- 
ties that entitle it to be called a work of art. This sin is not of 
modern origin but dates from the beginning of painting, and 
many pictures in the Louvre, the Uffizi, and all other large 
galleries, owe their reputation and their preservation almost 
solely to the character of the subject-matter. 





Titian ; Louvre 
Analysis, page 433 





Cézanne Barnes Foundation 


The design in these two paintings is very similar, showing irrelevancy 
of subject-matter to plastic value. 


Analysis, page 489 
(97) 





Tintoretto National Gallery 


In this painting and the one on opposite page dramatic subject-matter 
and plastic form are successfully merged. 


Analysis, page 437 


( 98 ) 





Paolo Veronese Louvre 
Analysis, page 437 


(99 ) 





Greek—400 B.C. Barnes Foundation 


( 100 ) 


Mins ilCe PORIMITAND SUBJECT -MATTER tor 


It is no easy task for a person to banish from his mind the 
subject-matter and concentrate upon a study of the manner in 
which color, line, space, and mass are used, and how they enter 
into relations with each other. To accomplish the result means 
the breaking up of a set of old, firmly-established habits and 
the beginning of new ones. But, as in other activities where 
genuine interest drives, once the new habits are started, they 
tend to operate almost automatically, so that after a time, one 
may become so familiar with a painting as to think of it only in 
terms of color, line, mass, space, plastic form. For example, of 
the hundreds of paintings upon detailed analysis of which this 
book is based, scarcely a score are known by the author in 
terms of their subject-matter, whether that be, in its general 
nature, religious, sentimental, dramatic. 

Difficulty is ordinarily encountered in appraising justly a 
painter who habitually accentuates those human values, relig- 
ious, sentimental, dramatic, in terms not purely plastic. Raphael 
sins grievously in this respect and so do Fra Angelico, Mantegna, 
Luini, Murillo, Turner, Delacroix and Millet; and for that 
reason they are all second or third-rate artists. Even the 
greater painters, such as Rubens, are not always immune. The 
error, indeed, is the same as that we have already discussed, in 
that it is usually by the excessive use of some plastic device that 
the over-expressiveness of subject-matter is effected-although 
the two are not fully identical. Ingres’s effects are melodra- 
matic in the plastic sense—they are dramatically linear—but 
not in the expressive or emotional sense, as are so often, say, 
Delacroix’s. The criterion for both of these forms of melo- 
drama, the plastic and the expressive, will appear as we con- 
sider command over plastic means. \When mastery of means 
is assured, when there is a definite balance of one means with 
another, there is a legitimate aesthetic effect: the appeal of the 
subject-matter is integrated with the plastic form, and senti- 
mentality or melodrama does not exist, no matter what the 
subject-matter may be. In other words, the values contributed 
by the subject portrayed are not specious or extraneous and any 
degree of emotional appeal is properly aesthetic. A painting 
may be dramatic, religious, or expressive of sex to an indefinite 
degree without being specious, cheap, pornographic or tawdry. 
The principle is precisely the same in the other arts, literature 
for example. Only the hopelessly prudish could find vulgarity 


102 THES ELE MEN TSiOhy BAT Naas 


in Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina, even though their subject- 
matter, marital infidelity, is the same as that of neighborhood 
gossip, the newspaper, or the divorce court. It is the manner 
of conceiving a subject, the ability to do it justice in terms of the 
artist’s materials, that determine whether the effect shall be false, 
tedious, disgusting or beautiful. Here again the criterion is that 
of reality, which means that any quality or effect taken in isola- 
tion is unreal, and what is unreal is uninteresting, fails to stir us. 

Success or failure in integration of the values of subject-matter 
with plastic qualities may be made more clear by considering 
some random illustrations. In Titian’s ‘‘Entombment,’’ the 
subject is solemn, sad, pathetic; but we feel that these emotions 
are restrained and dignified. So much for the obvious, repre- 
sented subject-matter. When viewed plastically, the picture 
presents a group of figures unified into a firmly-knit composition. 
The drawing is highly expressive of movement and gesture but 
does not indicate exaggerated grief or despair, such as we should 
expect to find in a lesser man’s treatment of the same subject. 
The color though glowing does not flaunt itself, but is of a sub- 
dued richness which pervades the whole canvas and contributes 
to the compositional unity. The robes in the bending figures 
to the right and left are brighter in color and serve as a sort 
of secondary frame, enclosing the members of the group, and 
setting them off from the background. The color, in other 
words, functions as an organizing principle. Finally, the use of 
light brings out the figure of the dead Christ, and is so distributed 
over the whole canvas as to form a design in itself, enhance 
and harmonize the color-values, contribute to the composition 
and heighten the sense of mystery and awe characteristic of the - 
event depicted. In this painting it is both the intrinsic interest 
of the event and the perfect codrdination of all the means, color, 
light, drawing, space, which make up the total aesthetic effect 
and establish the painting as one of the great achievements of 
plastic art. One need not, however, be a Christian, or indeed 
have any special interest in the event itself, to obtain from the 
painting the rich human values, the nobility intrinsic to sym- 
pathy, solemnity, tragedy. These values are rendered abstractly 
by means of color, line, mass, space, all unified into a rich, 
rhythmic design. 

In the Titian just discussed, the subject-matter itself is char- 
acterized by restraint, but quite the opposite qualities may be 


Peet a OO RIM! UNDA S UB YE CL—MAT TER (103 


realized aesthetically provided there is fusion of the plastic means. 
In paintings by El Greco, Tintoretto, Michel Angelo and Rubens, 
the subject-matter is often violent, tumultuous, or ecstatic in 
character, but it is so rendered in plastic terms that we get a 
sense of satisfaction and peace. In many paintings by Dela- 
croix, subject-matter is beginning to get the upper hand, and 
while we recognize his command over certain of the plastic 
means, especially color, we feel the theatrical character of the 
presentation and recognize that it is due to a failure to knit 
form and expression into an organic whole. Ina religious paint- 
ing by Guido Reni the balance between subject-matter and plas- 
tic means is usually completely destroyed, and we perceive a 
sentimental narrative almost devoid of art value. The perfect 
fusion of plastic means, even in the works of the greatest artists, 
is by no means found in all of their work. For example, in 
Titian’s ‘“‘Christ Crowned with Thorns,” there is a tendency to 
overemphasis of light, to sharply drawn lines more nearly like 
Raphael’s, and the melodramatic element begins to creep in 
at the expense of plastic form. In Paolo Veronese’s ‘Flight 
from Sodom,”’ the plastic design is perfectly realized by a fluid 
rhythm of line, color, mass and space, all gracefully flowing in 
the same direction and giving a plastic form fused perfectly with 
an intense and dramatic subject-matter. In his “‘Jupiter Fou- 
droyant les Crimes,’’ on the other hand, we see motion and 
drama with an almost complete absence of plastic equivalents. 

The religious theme is realized best in plastic terms by Giotto 
and El Greco, with an effect of great dignity and peace in Giotto, 
and of mysticism and ecstasy in El Greco. With lesser men the 
religious theme became perfunctory, trivial, or specious. Fra 
Angelico represents a certain stage of this descent, and although 
he has charm and a simple piety, his pictures owe their popu- 
larity to values that are sentimental and literary rather than 
plastic. In Murillo, the decay of the Spanish religious tradi- 
tion is much further advanced than that of the Italian in Fra 
Angelico: here the mysticism of El Greco has become an insipid 
sentimentalism, with resort to exaggerated lighting and a sweet- 
ness which suggests the consummation of Luini’s and Andrea 
del Sarto’s exploitation of Leonardo’s worst features. In Millet 
we have humanitarian religion, unsupported by the necessary 
plastic means, with the inevitable sentimentalism. When 
expression is overemphasized the effect is akin to that of photo- 


104 TWEE EOE MOEN Ts 9,0 ie Pea NGI LINAS 


graphic reproduction and is indeed often attained bysimilar means, 
that is, by literal representation. For example, sadness in a 
face may be represented by a few lines merely bent in certain 
directions; such representation is mere literal illustration. In 
Correggio there is disbalance between the values of subject- 
matter and values truly plastic: his women tend towards sweet- 
ness, in the manner of Leonardo and Raphael, and he too makes 
an excessive use of light. In his ‘Jupiter and Antiope,’’ though 
the color is pleasing, the composition effective, and the general 
design of a high order, there is a tendency toward superficiality 
in the color, together with a lack of variety, of richness; there 
is also a suspicion of triteness in the composition. There is 
more light, and more sweetness, than a perfectly balanced plastic 
form permits. 

Renoir in many of his pictures shows the charm of femininity 
in a lyric or idyllic setting which in the eyes of a superficial 
observer is likely to verge upon mere prettiness. But Renoir’s 
mastery of his medium enabled him so fully to realize his con- 
ceptions and to surround obvious charm with a wealth of plastic 
qualities, that the distinctive poetic charm is achieved by legiti- 
mate means. In the presence of a fine Renoir we feel that he 
was deeply sensitive to obvious, but very real, sources of delight 
in the world, and that he saw them as so much a part of the 
actually existing world, so thoroughly interwoven with the other 
qualities there, that his version of them is free from any touch of 
sentimentality. Renoir’s interest in subject-matter is revealed 
in terms that are plastic in high degree. 

Delicacy, grace, even fragility can be found in many of the 
greatest paintings, asin Fragonard’s “ Pierrot,’ or in Velasquez’s 
‘“‘Infanta Marguerita.’’ In these pictures the artist’s grasp of 
plastic essentials is so sure that the quality of the subject-matter 
lends a heightened charm. 

The development of painting in modern times took place in 
large measure contemporaneously with the revival of classic 
culture which we know as the Renaissance. Attention was 
concentrated upon the sculpture of ancient Greece and upon the 
many antique Roman sculptures found in excavations conducted 
in the neighborhood of Rome. It was inevitable that classic 
traditions and themes should appear in the work of the Renais- 
sance painters. ‘The classic influence was of great value so long 
as it was thoroughly assimilated and merged with the spirit of 
the age and rendered in plastic terms individual to the artist. 


PLASTIC FORM AND SUBJECT-MATTER 105 


Such merging is always a matter of degree; in Michel Angelo, for 
example, the heritage from the Greeks was completely incorpo- 
rated into the artist’s own spirit. In his Sistine Chapel frescoes 
the classic influence is clearly perceptible, but it takes on a new 
form. In Mantegna, on the other hand, the themes often seem 
to be lifted bodily from antique Roman sculpture, and there is 
the inevitable failure so to embody these themes in a setting of 
line, color, space, as to make them really live. The integration 
is accomplished perfectly in Claude, and in his use of a Virgilian 
glamor and romantic mystery there is no hint of falseness, of 
a sluggish imagination taking refuge in mimicry. He was 
able to make the ancient spirit live again under another sky, and 
to give an adequate and very personal plastic form to a world 
conceived both classically and romantically. 

In contrast we find in the French painter David the classicism 
which is a mere formula, a rattling of dry bones. In Ingres 
the classic tradition is also clearly seen. It inspired him, as it 
did Raphael, to a vivid sense of the effects possible by emphasis 
on clear-cut and pervasive linear quality, and his use of these 
effects was vigorous and personal. But David's classicism was 
destitute of any personal insight or vision, and his conventionality 
is reflected also in his stereotyped rendering of every aspect of 
subject-matter. His frigid correctness is superior to the self- 
conscious antiquarianism of the British Pre-Raphaelites only in 
that he knew more about his subject and could make a more 
skillful use of his brush. 

We have seen that plastic deficiencies that are not due to 
simple technical incompetence, almost always take the form of 
overaccentuation in one or another of its various types. The 
reason for this is that a painter who has nothing of his own to 
show, but who possesses a certain amount of technical skill, can 
only imitate what someone else has shown. Usually, he bor- 
rows the more striking features, the mannerisms, makes a 
formula out of the original; the result is overemphasis of what 
is borrowed and relative neglect of everything else. When a 
painter has great technical skill, he may do this so successfully 
as to deceive the inexperienced observer; hence, if we are to 
understand and judge any. painter justly, it is necessary to know 
at least something of the history of painting. The salient 
feature of this will be sketched briefly in subsequent chapters; 
but first a more adequate account of the plastic means will be 
given. 


CTA Peer haul 


COLOR 


As we have seen, color is the most obvious of the plastic means 
and comes nearest being the raw material of painting, since all 
the other elements, line, light, etc., may be regarded as modi- 
fications or aspects or results of color. Color has an effect which 
depends upon its intrinsic quality, independent of all relation to 
the other constituents in the aesthetic ensemble of the picture. 
We all know that some colors produce quiet and restful effects, 
while others produce the exact opposite; and the fact cannot be 
questioned that the specific sensations of ,color with which a 
picture presents us have much to do with its appeal, both imme- 
diate and permanent. In Raphael, for example, the color, 
simply as sensuous material, is rarely good and if we abstract 
it from every other quality of the picture, we ordinarily find it 
either indifferent or displeasing. It is usually like the colors 
in a cheap rug or fabric—either dull or overbrilliant. In Gior- 
gione, Cézanne or Renoir we see quite the reverse in the imme- 
diate sensuous charm that pervades and heightens all the more 
complicated effects. The effect is not unlike that which simple 
physical charm gives to personality, in making moral and 
intellectual qualities more vivid and appealing, more intensely 
felt, as well as judged favorably or approved. 

Variety or richness, and harmony, add greatly to “quality” 
in color, both in the picture as a whole and in the separate parts, 
elements, or units. In the great colorists, Giotto, Giorgione, 
Titian, Rubens, Renoir, Cézanne, there seems to be no limit to 
the multiplicity of hues and tints introduced into the simplest 
object, an orange, a cup, a hand, a lock of hair; yet these color- 
chords are invariably units in themselves. The effect of unity 
in diversity is repeated again and again, with successively more 
comprehensive units, until we come to the picture as a whole, 
which seems a symphony of color, in which the direct sensuous 
appeal is enormously heightened by the sense of the relations 
between the colors employed, with each color setting off and 


COLOR 107 


being itself set off by all the others. The abstract values we 
experience are charm, delicacy, unity, reality. 

In order to appreciate the aesthetic significance of color as 
the great moderns used it, we must be acquainted with the values 
of color as illustrated by the Venetians, above all by Giorgione, 
Titian and Tintoretto. These painters employed colors which 
are intrinsically pleasing, and are diversified and harmonized to 
yield the maximum effects; there is a magnificence in these 
effects which has never been equalled. Renoir advanced beyond 
the Venetian tradition by utilizing the contributions made by 
Rubens, by the Eighteenth Century French painters, especially 
Fragonard, by Delacroix and by the impressionists, so that in 
the richly decorative aspects of his surfaces he is without a peer. 
On the other hand, the extreme richness, the voluptuousness of 
his color, detracts in some measure from his strength: there is 
in Giorgione, Titian and Cézanne a greater effect of power. 

In contrast, Leonardo shows a relative barrenness of color. In 
both the Paris and the London versions of his ‘‘La Vierge aux 
Rochers,’”’ the color not only lacks obvious appeal, but in its 
variation throughout the picture there is a lack of inventiveness, 
of a sense of the possibilities of variation and harmony. It is 
mainly tone; when the tone is lighter in shade it seems to have 
an effect merely of shininess, when darker, of muddiness. Color 
itself, and color-relations, detract much from the value of his 
plastic form. 

- It must be remembered that sensuous charm or richness in 
color is not the same thing as brightness. Colors which are 
bright without being rich or deep give an effect of garishness or 
.gaudiness, and the general effect is of superficiality. Lorenzo 
Monaco is an example of bright color which gives no sense of 
glow or splendor, while in Daumier and Rembrandt, though the 
colors are very subdued, there is no effect of drabness or dingi- 
ness. 

Variety of color does not mean variety in the sense of employ- 
ment of all the colors in the spectrum. Rembrandt’s subtly- 
modified dark tones suggest a great variety of color, and Piero 
della Francesca used chiefly a silvery blue so modified and varied 
in shade, so tinged with light and shadow, that we feel in him 
a rich repertoire of color, and are conscious only upon reflection 
of the economy of his means. If Delacroix’s colors were taken 
out of his canvases and arranged side by side as in the spectrum, 


108 LH Es ELEM ENS S Os ees Leis 


his vastly greater actual variety would be revealed, but a good 
Piero hung beside a Delacroix would show that Piero was the 
greater colorist. 

We have hitherto used the word ‘‘richness’’ in a way that 
might be construed to mean “‘variety,’’ as when we say that 
there is great richness of color in Renoir, and comparatively 
little in Perugino. But there is another sense of the word for 
which we may find a synonym, by a figure of speech, in “‘juici- 
ness,’’ which means something opposed to “dryness.” This is 
present nearly always in the greatest masters of color, in Titian, 
Rubens, Delacroix and Renoir. Its opposite, dryness, is not, 
however, a term of unqualified reproach. Poussin is a great 
artist and an important colorist, yet the color in his pictures is 
almost invariably dry. The distinction is thus not invariably one 
between good and bad, since there are aesthetic effects to 
which dry color is a positive reinforcement; a painter may use 
very juicy color, like Monticelli, without thereby becoming an 
artist of the first rank. Again, if Puvis had emulated Renoir in 
the use of color, his own distinctive form would have suffered 
rather than gained. 

We have discussed color in isolation from the other plastic 
means, but not all the differences in color-quality can be made 
clear unless we consider the relation of color to light, composi- 
tion, modelling, etc. Color combines with light to form what 
may be called atmosphere, and this may be a most important 
element in aesthetic effect, as in the Venetians, in Rembrandt, 
and in the impressionists. Furthermore, light has a direct 
influence upon color, and the incapacity to take advantage of 
this influence is a serious defect in plastic form. In the world 
of real things, color changes in quality under different degrees of 
illumination, and the ability to utilize the alteration so effected 
is an important part of the painter’s command over his materials. 
When light is not properly used in connection with color, plastic 
reality suffers because of the absence of the modification and 
enrichment that light works upon color. Instead of bringing 
out and revealing new harmonies within color, the light seems to 
efface color and act merely as a substitute for it. In Leonardo 
and Raphael, too much light overdoes the contrast between 
light and shadow, and, in addition, the light fails to make the 
color function vigorously. The contrast between light and 
shadow is even more striking in Rembrandt, but his handling 


COLOR 10g 


of color-indications is so skillful that the chiaroscuro is utilized 
as an enhancement of color and not as camouflage for lack of it. 

The use of light in connection with color as atmosphere is to 
be seen conspicuously in the Venetians, in the painters of the 
Barbizon School, and in the impressionists. It appears for the 
first time in the work of the Fourteenth Century Florentine, 
Masaccio. In the real world, atmosphere blurs the outlines of 
objects at a distance from the eye. This naturalistic effect is in 
Masaccio’s painting increased by an addition of color to the sim- 
ple haze of nature. Except among the primitives, almost all 
painters reproduce the blurred outlines of distant objects, but 
the effect of atmosphere as a luminous color in which all things 
float is not universal in painting. Sometimes, as in Whistler, 
it is an obvious imitation of mist; sometimes it is a source of 
melodramatic pseudo-romance, as in Turner; but when employed 
with discrimination, as in Claude and the Venetians, it is a power- 
ful reinforcement having its own aesthetic effect. It is usually 
golden in Claude, in the Venetians it is golden with an admixture 
of rose, and in Corot itis silvery. As atranslucent atmosphere, 
a circumambient glow, it supplements or blends with the local 
colors, augments decorative quality, aids in knitting the compo- 
sition together, and thus functions as an important element in 
the plastic form. 

The role of color in drawing and composition is as important 
as its joint function with light in creating atmosphere, but it 
may be more conveniently discussed in the chapters dealing 
with those topics. There remains one other important distinc- 
tion in the use of color to be discussed at this point. Color may 
or may not seem to be a part of the actual structure or mass of 
an object. As we have seen, the usual manner of rendering 
solidity is by showing a graduated increase in light or shadow. 
Such modelling was developed to a very high degree of perfec- 
tion in Leonardo and Michel Angelo, and since their time it 
has been the usual method of giving the impression of solidity. 
But modelling has a richer plastic value when the artist is able 
to give the impression that color is an integral part of the solid 
structure. The Venetians were the first to realize this structural 
use of color and it became an important plastic resource in 
subsequent great painters, notably Rubens, Delacroix, Velasquez, 
El Greco, Renoir and Cézanne. In Giorgione, Titian and Tin- 
toretto, a solid body does not appear as something which has 


IIO DHE! BLE MOR NES One AUN lens 


substance in itself independent of color. The substance seems 
to be built up out of color, that is, the color seems to go down 
into the solid substance and permeate it. In every detail in 
Titian’s ‘‘Man with the Glove’’ color seems to be the actual 
material out of which the form is wrought, as it does in Tintor- 
etto’s ‘Paradise.’ In contrast, Leonardo’s effects of solidity 
are largely independent of color: there is not a great deal of 
color at best, and what there is is usually superficial. In Ingres’s 
paintings, we get the impression that the form is completely 
fashioned or moulded before any thought of color entered the 
painter’s mind; the result is a lack of that solidity which one 
sees when color is used structurally. The color is in evidence 
in Ingres, but it seems something added after the substance has 
taken shape and consequently it lacks the full plastic reality 
one finds in objects structurally rendered in color as, for example, 
in Cézanne. 

The preéminence of the Venetians as colorists is due to the 
successful use of color both in the structural sense and in the 
form of a circumambient glow which suffuses every part of the 
canvas. The separability of suffusion and the structural use 
of color is illustrated in Albertinelli’s “‘Christ Appearing to 
Magdalen,” in which we have an approach to the suffusion 
characteristic of the Venetians, but in which color functions only 
feebly in making up the structural solidity of objects. The 
relatively dark colors in the foreground and the silvers and blues 
in the background seem to swim in a light haze which brings the 
masses and spaces into beautiful harmonious relationships. The 
effect is the abstract feeling of gentleness, of peace and delicate 
charm. Strength, in the sense of power, seems to be entirely 
absent, yet the painting is one of the most satisfying of the 
whole Renaissance period. 

A pervasive color effect of an entirely different kind is best 
illustrated in Giotto. His color is not structural in the Venetian 
sense, though we are conscious of a perfect harmony of color 
and form. The atmosphere is usually as clear as crystal, and 
the colors stand out like jewels, in contrast to the Venetian 
glow in which there is a suggestion of translucency amounting 
at times to a haze. In spite of this crystalline transparency of 
Giotto, the pervasive color, into which reddish, yellowish and 
bluish tints merge, is extremely marked, and adds much to the 
elevated and mysterious effect. The religious character imparted 


COTOR ae 


may be expressed if we say that in Giotto the world is trans- 
figured, and that the limpid, sparkling color-glow is the main 
agent in the transfiguration. In Rembrandt, though the actual 
color is very different, we find the same mystical effect, the same 
sense of reality without any approach to photographic realism, 
and here too the effect is due to the same extreme sensitiveness 
to color-values and ability to render them by subtle yet unmis- 
takable means. Indeed, the mysticism which art at its best 
conveys seems to attach itself in a peculiar degree to the master- 
ful handling of color, and points to the fact that color is the 
source, par excellence, of the highest ‘‘quality’’ in painting. 
(For detailed analysis of these effects, as of those referred to in 
the following, see Appendix.) 

Another form of color-effect is that in Piero della Francesca. 
In him we have neither the solid structural use of color, nor the 
juiciness which is so often a sign of great ability in color-handling. 
His color is unmistakably dry. His total effect, of an all-embrac- 
ing coolness, requires exactly the colors which he uses. The 
basis of this effect is blue; but it is a blue so infinitely diversified 
by light that it becomes a whole series of blues with only the 
most subtle distinctions between them. They are so juxtaposed 
and blended with other harmonious colors, cool greens, grays, 
reds as to provide a complete set of new and distinctive color 
forms. This dominant note of coolness is Piero’s characteristic 
form, and is perfectly blended with the drawing, composition, 
expression, etc., to create a distinctive note of the highest 
aesthetic excellence. 

With this we come to the topic of color-design. The foregoing 
illustrations embody effects perceptible when we isolate color 
from all other plastic elements and consider it asa thing in itself. 
But there are types of definite color-designs other than the glows 
or suffusions of which we have been speaking. In Tintoretto’s 
‘Paradise,’ the rhythmic flow of color is an essential part of 
the general effect of fluid, graceful, swirling movement, and 
forms a rich color-design which plays its part quite independently 
of the other elements. 

A somewhat similar effect is to be found in Poussin, whose 
color is rather dry, and though it cannot be called superficial. 
is not deeply structural in its function. Butits flow and rhythm 
extend to every part of the canvas and make up a design well 
in harmony with Poussin’s general form of delicacy and ‘‘choice- 


12 THE ELE MENS) *0O Fo ePAtN Taha 


ness.’ The color-design reinforces his linear and compositional 
rhythms, and appears as a distinguishable but perfectly merged 
element in his plastic form. 

In ‘‘Mona Lisa,’’ Leonardo really makes color function suc- 
cessfully, a rare achievement with him. The deep, rich brown- 
ish-reds in the sleeve of the figure, duplicated in the neigh- 
boring background, are an organic part of the form, and not only 
contribute to tieing it up and making it real, but form a definite 
color-design. This is unusual for Leonardo, for even in his 
most successful picture, “‘Bacchus,’’ the color adds but little 
to the design. Indeed, one of the chief reasons for denying to 
Leonardo a place among the greatest artists is his inability to 
merge light with color, as they are merged whenever either 
appears at its best, as in Giotto, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, 
Rubens, Rembrandt, Renoir and Cézanne. 

The use of color to make a design is well illustrated in Soutine, 
a contemporary painter. Soutine’s characteristic form is that 
of intense movement, of passion, and his choice and combination 
of colors is peculiarly adjusted to this effect. His hot, juicy, 
vivid and varied color is the antithesis of Piero’s, yet both men 
achieve color-design of a high order. 

In Fra Angelico, we have also a pleasing bright blue, but with 
less sense of harmony with other colors. Instead of the per- 
vasive charm of Piero or the brilliance and power of Giotto, 
we have a staccato effect as one color follows another across 
the canvas, and this, though it forms a design of a kind, 
is not aesthetically very moving. The actual quality of the 
color is sometimes pleasing, but the color-relations are too 
reminiscent of those of other painters, and this deficiency is 
made more serious by the fact that they are usually superficial. 
Only in one picture, the ‘‘Crucifixion’’ does integration of the 
plastic elements really take place effectively. In this, the color 
is more nearly organic and its quality is comparatively juicy 
instead of, as usual, acid. The color-relations there really play 
a part in making up the plastic form. 

In Perugino although the color is not deeply felt or organically 
used and lacks juiciness and richness, it is in keeping with the 
design, which is in general light and delicate, tasteful rather than 
moving. In Raphael, there is almost no real color-sense. If we 
abstract from the other elements and look for a color-design, we 
usually find nothing of great aesthetic significance. Everything 


COLOR 113 


else, light, line, composition, modelling, design, is practically 
complete without color, though he was sufficiently skillful as a 
painter to avoid that gross misuse of color that would have 
detracted from his general design. Usually his color is academic, 
that is, taken from other painters and with little or no individu- 
ality in its use. Occasionally, as in the ‘‘Madonna with the 
Blue Diadem,”’ and the ‘‘Donna Velata,’’ color contributes to 
the ensemble effect. In his famous Madonna, “‘La Belle Jardi- 
niére,’’ one must be able to ignore the color to enjoy the fine 
drawing and feeling for space. The color, when abstracted, is 
garish and drab, in spite of the bright red of the dress. The 
good modelling with light loses its force by reason of the absence 
of color, which is called for to make the figure live. The effect 
is doughy and pasty, as of a statue in soft plaster. Raphael’s 
inferiority as a colorist appears again in the contrast between 
his “‘Count Baldassare Castiglione’? and Titian’s ‘‘Man with 
the Glove.’”’ In both pictures the color is present mainly as 
tone, but in the Raphael it is superficial, dry, monotonous, and 
it has little or no value as.a design. 

In “The Ascent to Calvary,’ by Simone Martini, the bright 
colors make a design lending vivacity to a picture which is 
essentially illustration, rather than a complete plastic form. 
Their brightness does not make them really moving; neverthe- 
less their ensemble effect fits in well, with the general form of 
the picture. In Mantegna, the lack of quality in color-relations, 
their failure to form a design, is sometimes a positive drawback. 
That this is not due to the specific colors used is apparent from 
the fact that the dark greens which appear in the Louvre pic- 
tures by him are used by many other painters, and with no 
effect of dullness or muddiness. In ‘‘The Agony in the Garden,” 
he appears to better advantage, for there color does function 
successfully in unifying the design and enriching plastic form. 

In the use of color academicism is very common. Raphael is 
an instance of this at a comparatively high level of skill; in his 
imitators, Guido Reni and Giulio Romano, the imitation of 
Raphael is doubly academic, and is not merely indifferent but 
offensive. The Venetian glow appears in the lesser painters of 
the school, Palma Vecchio and Sebastiano del Piombo, but it 
has become an overaccentuation, a melodrama, with imitative 
character testified to by the general overemphasis, in gesture, 
facial expression, etc. In the Barbizon painter, Rousseau, 


II4 cH EOE LE MIEN SiO Fre Agen Gls ee 


Claude’s color is academicized, with resulting artificiality and 
feebleness; the same is true of Van Dyck, in relation to Rubens. 
In Watteau and Fragonard, Rubens’s style, including his color, 
is so modified and individualized and so adapted to new pur- 
poses that it becomes a new form of ethereal and delicate flavor. 
The Poussin tradition becomes academic, cheap, and tawdry in 
Le Seur, whose color is hopelessly gaudy and trivial. His plagi- 
arism is obvious and is unredeemed by any plastic force or 
reality. 

The foregoing discussion, brief and incomplete as it is, shows 
how superficial is the view of nearly all the critics that color is 
a relatively unimportant element in painting. This view is 
definitely stated by Roger Fry; it is stated and then retracted 
by Berenson, but the judgments on pictures to which he gives 
expression in his books on the Italian painters, show how little 
he really appreciates the role played by color in plastic art. 
In aesthetic criticism of lower order, such as Mather’s, there is 
no evidence of any intelligent conception of the function of color 
in painting. The importance of Giotto as a colorist, for example, 
is entirely overlooked, and so is the function of color throughout 
the whole Florentine School, which is said by Berenson to be 
preoccupied with ‘‘tactile values,”’ that is, modelling—really a 
very secondary matter. Again, in the Venetians, though the 
role of color is emphasized by the critics named, its signifi- 
cance is never explained even in general principles, and there is 
no sign of any recognition of the extremely important matter 
of the organic use of color, which is not even referred to. This 
neglect is indicative of the failure on the part of critics to see 
that by far the most important characteristic of color is its 
capacity for actually contributing a part of the relations that 
make up plastic form, instead of merely being the material of 
the picture. That color-relations are all-important in the design, 
in the total form of a picture, that the highest and best form of 
composition is by means of color, is one of the most weighty 
facts in aesthetics, and it is one to which those who are most 
ready to write on plastic art seem to be totally oblivious. 


CSE Fo hie Raa 


DRAWING 


A COMMON mistake is that by which drawing is considered as 
a matter only of line defining literal contour and making a sharp 
edge or border between two adjacent objects. But even in some 
of the early painters, such as Giotto and Titian, drawing is a 
fusion of many elements, of which line is only one. When the 
linear motive is dominant, as in Ingres, line not only defines 
contours but functions as enrichment, both by its individual 
expressiveness and by its relation to other lines, masses, color, 
etc. It is this combination of plastic elements that makes up 
drawing in its proper sense. The expressiveness of line is some- 
thing which can be detected and judged only after close observa- 
tion and long experience; to summarize the results of such experi- 
ence, it will be necessary to discuss briefly the manner in which 
line is used in its development from less to more expressive form 
through the history of painting. 

Painting developed out of mosaics. In them, the definition 
of contour was necessarily very sharp, and this sharpness 
remained for a long time characteristic of painting. In Cimabue, 
the line of demarcation between one object and another is very 
clear-cut, so that the surface of the canvas is divided into what 
might be called color-tight compartments, and the line between 
them seems to belong to neither compartment. Line used in 
that manner makes a rigid fixity in the movement and expres- 
sion of all the figures so that the actual impression of movement 
is lacking. Also, there is comparatively little integration of the 
lines of separate objects in a linear design in the picture as a 
whole. After Cimabue, the line became more integrated with 
light, with color, and with composition, so that these elements 
are recognizable only upon abstraction and analysis. At the 
start, the pictures seem like line-drawings to which color, light, 
etc., were applied after the design was essentially complete; 
subsequently, the drawing was conceived in terms of all the 
plastic elements, with the result of a great increase in unity, 


116 THE ELEM EN TDS~_O\b)2 PP AMEN Tl 


reality, and moving force. In Giotto, the line is no longer 
literal or isolated but a simple, terse and forceful factor that 
compels the use of our imagination to grasp the significance of 
what it portrays. The line is still clear-cut, but the color and 
light on each side are merged with it to give an ensemble effect 
of more convincing reality than is possible from line alone; in 
other words, the line gets its force from the relations it assumes, 
and we say the line is “‘plastic.’’ In the drawing of the indi- 
vidual objects, and of the picture as a whole, the sequence of 
line and mass is fluid, rhythmic and harmonized to make up 
the total design. 

In Masaccio we have the first important step towards natural- 
istic effects in drawing, in the employment of blurred outline. 
In Andrea del Castagno, the sharpness of line is diminished 
through the use of the swirl, and this necessitates further sim- 
plification and abandonment of mere literalism, with the result 
that the expressiveness of the line, and its use in abstract design, 
is further heightened. In Fra Filippo Lippi, line is less expres- 
sive and powerful than in Masaccio and Andrea del Castagno, 
but there is an increase of grace and decorative quality, which 
adds to the effect of design. In Uccello, the line is less fluid 
and stiffer, and by reason of these qualities it has a quite pecu- 
liar effect in achieving individual design. Line is still very sharp 
in both these men, and has little or no effect of movement, even 
when the subject-matter is ostensibly dynamic. 

In Piero della Francesca, there is still little effect of realism, 
but the line is more reinforced by color, and the general design 
is much more elaborate, varied, and powerful aesthetically. He 
gets many of the effects of drawing by means of color, without 
abandoning the clearly separate character of the two elements. 
The absence of movement or drama in his drawing is required 
by his generally quiet and detached style. 

In Botticelli the line gives the effect of active movement, but 
it is so isolated, elaborated, and overworked that the result is a 
loss of plastic unity. The line forms an intricate series of ara- 
besques, so feebly supported by use of the other plastic means, 
that the drawing is not really an element in structural form, 
but is rather decoration. The result is an effect of facile virtu- 
osity which is superficially attractive but has little moving force. 
The line forms a pattern rather than a design, and is used with- 
out consideration of the appropriateness to subject-matter: in 





Greek Vase—500 B.C. Barnes Foundation 


Note distortions of naturalistic appearances. 


(i279) 





El Greco Barnes Foundation 


Design achieved by means of distortions and contrasts. 


( 118 ) 





Picasso Barnes Foundation 


Modern version of El Greco’s design. 


Analysis, page 508 


( 119 ) 





Toulouse-Lautrec Barnes Foundation 


Design achieved by contrasts, including modernized chiaroscuro. 


( 120) 


DRAWING I21I 


his religious pictures, for example, it produces a tendency to a 
swirl which is not at all in keeping with the spirit of the picture. 

Leonardo’s sharp line also stands out clearly, but, since it is 
merged with the modelling and is much more functional in the 
design, it is much less of an overaccentuation than Botticelli’s. 
In ‘‘Mona Lisa,’’ for example, the lines in the sleeves and in the 
background really give an impression of solidity and depth, as 
compared with the merely decorative quality of the more elab- 
orate linear pattern in Botticelli’s ‘‘The Birth of Venus,”’ 
Leonardo’s line was taken over by Raphael and made more 
incisive, more dramatic, more rhythmically varied, and on the 
whole more interesting as a design. In both men, the line often 
tended toward literal expression and oversweetness, and this is not 
entirely counterbalanced in Leonardo by the quality of solidity 
which he gives to his masses, or in Raphael by the impression 
of vigorous movement. Raphael’s line is prodigal rather than 
terse, and consequently lacks the high degree of expressive power 
which comes with economy of means. His line is very sharp, is 
quite independent of color, and the light, by which it is comple- 
mented, heightens the sense of overdramatization. 

In Michel Angelo line and color are distinct but are so well 
related that the drawing has a quality of great strength, which 
increases the reality and aesthetic appeal. His drawing was a 
modification of that of Signorelli and Cosimo Tura, but he 
endowed it with greater strength, merged it better in the form 
as a whole, and used it to give expression to subject-matter of 
richer imaginative scope. 

The drawing of the Venetians was an advance over that of 
their predecessors in that they make a systematic use of color 
and of blurred line. Since they used color as a part of the 
structure of objects and also in creating the Venetian atmos- 
pheric glow, the definition of areas by sharp lines was neither 
necessary nor desirable for the general design. The earlier 
Venetians, Bellini and Carpaccio, retained the use of sharp line 
and merged it well with color and light, though not sufficiently 
to attain the convincing reality found in Giorgione and Titian. 
In Giorgione the contours are comparatively little blurred but 
they do not stand out and cause the attention to be centred on 
themselves. In Titian, the objects often seem to melt into one 
another, and this represents the expressive function of drawing 
achieved with the minimum of means. Here line, color and 


122 THE EL EM EON DSc Beer iN tele 


light are completely synthesized, and drawing reaches its highest 
estate. 

In Tintoretto the line, light and color are all completely 
merged in the form of a-swirl which is the most effective means 
of representing powerful movement and drama. It may also. 
be adapted to other purposes. When the swirl is toned down 
and used to depict the hard, clear quality of textures, the organic 
use of the color prevents the clear demarcations from seeming 
like isolated line, and the effect is of greater solidity and reality. 
In Paolo Veronese, the line is on the whole sharper than in the 
other important Venetians, but is still so integrated in the 
plastic form that it is thoroughly real. In his “Flight from 
Sodom,” the drawing is done on a large scale; the line pervades. 
the whole picture, flows from object to object, and gives the 
effect of motion in a particular direction by its general disposition 
through the canvas. This pervasively unifying line is character- 
istic of all the best Venetian painters. 

Compared with that of the great Venetians, Poussin’s line 
represents a reversion. It is extremely expressive of grace, ele- 
gance, delicacy, charm, but it has not the reality of Titian’s 
and is less firmly integrated with color. It is less incisive than 
Raphael’s, and has less power than Leonardo’s; but both of 
these attenuations are very well adapted to Poussin’s designs, 
and they are used throughout the canvas in both their decorative 
and expressive roles. 

In Rubens, contour is sharper than in Titian but less sharp 
than in Raphael. His swirl necessarily gives the effect of broken 
line, so that within the confines of a surface there is less of the 
broad unbroken area of color which throws hard contours into 
sharp relief. His line is repeated rhythmically over and over, and 
contributes strongly to the effect of animation and movement, 
but is less convincing and powerful than Tintoretto’s, in which 
color is more deeply fused with all the other plastic elements. 

Rembrandt’s drawing is accomplished with extreme subtlety 
and economy of means. The merging of light, line, and color is 
so perfect that minute analysis is required to differentiate 
between them; in addition, the effects are more restrained and 
so more powerful aesthetically, than those of Rubens. There is 
perfect differentiation of masses, and yet the actual marks on © 
the canvas by which this is done are scarcely perceptible. His 
subtle line is infinitely more expressive than Botticelli’s or 


DRAWING 123 


Raphael’s in conveying feeling and characteristic movement or 
gesture with the utmost sensitiveness. There is this same 
subtlety in Velasquez: the chief difference from Rembrandt’s 
drawing is that the reinforcement of line is with Velasquez less 
by means of light and more by means of color. El Greco’s line 
is the antithesis of Velasquez’s. It is so distorted and so varied 
in direction, length, and proportions as to give an impression of 
emotional frenzy carried to the highest intensity. But the 
effect is real and genuine and not melodramatic—the activity of 
the line is perfectly matched by similar activity in the light, 
color and all other plastic factors. 

Upon close inspection, Claude’s drawing in objects seems 
inferior to that of the greatest painters. His line lacks terseness, 
individuality, expressiveness. But if we examine the drawing 
of the picture as a whole, we find line formed by the sequence 
of masses instead of by the definition of one mass against another, 
and that larger line is fluid, varied, rhythmic, and distinctive. 
Claude’s design required the rendering of the lineaments of a 
total scene, which he was able to do better by slighting the 
drawing of the details of individual objects. In Boucher the 
line is quite hard and partakes of Botticelli’s qualities of grace 
and sensuous charm, with much decorative and little real 
expressive power. Its sharpness imparts a delicate cameo- 
quality. Watteau and Fragonard show very soft contours, with 
a general tendency to diffuseness; Fragonard’s drawing is 
stronger because a better fusion of color and line, accom- ~ 
panied by distortion, gives it a more positive effect in design. In 
Chardin the contour is sharper, but the drawing is so sensitive, 
expressive, and tempered with light and color, that it seems 
subdued and makes a strong but unobtrusive element in the 
plastic form. 

In David, the drawing is the skillful, hard, cold and funda- 
mentally trite drawing of the academician. In Ingres it is far 
more varied, more rhythmic, more sensitive, and is quite original. 
The classic feeling of coldness is present and the line is very 
tight; but there is a sense in which it is more effective than in 
any other painter. Although Ingres’s pictures may almost be 
said to be made out of line, the line does much more than define 
the meeting-place of two distinct objects. It renders the basic 
feeling of the surfaces depicted without much aid from color 
and light, so that the line is the groundwork of the painting. 


124 THE, ELE MiEINDS a0. Fes PaAeNet NG 


In a measure, it does for Ingres what chiaroscuro does for 
Rembrandt, that is, gives an equivalent for the other plastic 
means. Of course, line cannot give the full equivalent; but it 
does function organically, and so is far less of an overaccentua- 
tion than it is in Botticelli, in whom it is little more than a 
pattern. Ingres’s use of line is really art and not mere virtu- 
osity, but it is not the greatest art, partly because this particular 
means is inadequate to bear the full weight of plastic form, partly 
because Ingres lacked the freshness and depth of insight of the 
really great masters: he did not have a great deal to say. 

Daumier was another master of line, though of quite a differ- 
ent sort. His line, which is highly vigorous, concentrated, and 
expressive, codperates with light and modelling to give an effect 
of great weight and solidity combined with activity. In some 
paintings his drawing is comparable in power and expressiveness 
with that of Rembrandt, and is executed by a similar use of 
light and color, combined with a sharper line. 

Delacroix’s drawing is comparatively negligible from the stand- 
point of original plastic expressiveness. In line, light and 
color it derives from Rubens, and is too often perverted to noisy 
purposes that are obviously narrative and psychological. This 
psychological motif was rendered with much more effect by 
Degas, who added the flexibility, variety, and skill of Ingres, 
and made a form in which the psychological expressiveness of 
line is given an adequate plastic embodiment. He had rare 
ability to render character and movement in line of great force, 
sensitiveness, and originality, and in a context of color and com- 
position which assure a considerable degree of plastic reality. 
His form represents the consummation of a type of drawing 
which, while partly illustrative, is plastically satisfying in a high 
degree. In his paintings, as distinguished from his work in 
pastel, there is a tendency to rely too much on line without 
sufficient support from the other plastic means, so that in spite 
of the genuineness of his effects his paintings do not reach the 
highest level of achievement. 

Courbet’s line is comparatively hard, but his total drawing 
has distinction and power in conveying his particular realistic 
effects. In Manet, the line is merged well with the other plastic 
elements and his successful drawing tends away from literalism 
and more toward achievement of design. In Claude Monet, 
line is often almost dissolved in an excess of light and color, and 
the result is a loss of vigor, expressiveness, and strength of design. 


DRAWING 125 


There is not the firm structure beneath the veil of color and 
light that there is in Renoir and Cézanne. 

In these later men, the contributions of all previous painters 
are in large measure summed up and revised to make new forms. 
In Renoir, the Titian-Rubens-Fragonard tradition of loose line, 
drawn with the aid of color, is further modified by the lighting 
and brush-work of the impressionists. Literalism is abandoned, 
and the drawing melts into a total form of which the key-note 
is grace and charm, combined with an essential grasp of the 
qualities of real things that avoids the flaccid romanticism of 
Watteau. In Cézanne, the tradition of Michel Angelo, Tintoretto 
and El Greco, who employed distortions to get strength, is 
passed through the channels of impressionism, and emerges with 
a new note of significance and reality, heightened by planes 
intersecting in perspective. In a still later painter, Glackens, 
we have a general style similar to Renoir’s, modified by the 
psychological expressiveness of Daumier and Degas, but even 
more simplified and quite as revealing of character of subject by 
movement, gesture, etc. 

In general, drawing by line is good art when it is free from 
confusing elements, like literal contour or overdecorative qual- 
ity; when it is so condensed, so simplified that it carries in 
itself sufficient revelation of objective fact to enable us to grasp 
the essence, significance, conviction of objective reality in the 
things portrayed. In short, drawing by line consists not in 
the literal reproduction of contours or shapes; it is a mark of the 
artist’s ability to resolve the lines of demarcation into separate 
parts, select certain parts for emphasis and recombine them into 
a new ensemble that is a form in itself, not merely a duplication 
of the shape of an object. Line gets power by what it does to 
what is contained between the lines; that is, as with all other 
forms, its essential characteristic resides in the relations it assumes 
and creates. 

A man’s drawing is as distinctive of himself, of his personality 
(his candor, reality, freedom from affectation) as is his face, his 
writing, or his psychological make-up as revealed by analysis. 
A line in isolation is rarely to be considered in a painting; it 
gets form from its relation to other lines; when used in connec- 
tion with other lines it achieves plastic reality; its value in the 
hierarchy of art is determined by its significant use in connec- 
tion with the other elements—color, light, mass, shadow—which 
make up drawing. 


CHAPTER V 


COMPOSITION 


CoMPOSITION, which in its general sense is the arrangement of 
masses, is capable of great variety. Its value is determined by 
the painter’s ability to make the elements hang together in a 
unified whole. It is good in proportion as it embodies the 
painter’s feeling for symmetry, order, balance, rhythm. It is 
in its highest estate when these characteristics have the indi- 
vidual flavor which we term originality. It is the factor in a 
painting which is most abused by academic painters to achieve 
a surface imitation of aesthetic value. When the personal note 
which characterizes originality appears in a composition, it is 
usually condemned by critics and academic painters as bad art. 
There are no rules about composition restricting it to one or more 
rigid categories. The only rule is that which is applicable to 
everything else in life which we find interesting: it must show 
an order which satisfies our demand that things go well together. 

There are, however, a number of general types of composition 
which are constantly met with and which require examination. 
The simplest form is that of a centre mass with balancing figures 
to right and left by which bilateral symmetry is attained; this 
form is usually that of a pyramid. This illustrates the principle 
of order in an obvious form: the sense of stability, of rhythm 
is achieved. It is illustrated in most of Raphael’s Madonnas, 
but with him its use is so stereotyped that it indicates a poverty 
of imagination which detracts from aesthetic richness. How- 
ever, this form, although in itself trite, may be combined with 
other qualities, color, light, line, of such personal and distinctive 
character, as in the Castlefranco Giorgione, that the successful 
use of these plastic means discounts the banality of the compo- 
sition. 

The variation and enrichment of composition by which 
greater personal expressiveness is achieved begins when instead 
of a complete bilateral symmetry we have a mass different in 


COMPOSITION 127 


kind but similar in function, which surprises and yet fulfills 
the normal desire for balance. In Titian’s “‘The Supper at 
Emmaus,” the number of figures on the left of the central 
figure is greater than on the right, but there is in addition on 
the right a window opening out on a landscape, which adds to 
the interest of the design; thus, unity is not disturbed and 
variety is increased. 

In the foregoing, it is their relation to a central mass that 
ties together the separate masses. The central figure is usually 
in these cases the figure of greatest interest, so that there is an 
obvious parallel between plastic and narrative or human values 
of the several units. But the object that ties up the parts of 
a picture may be in itself trivial from the narrative point of 
view, as, for example, the Chinese tree in Cosimo Rosselli’s fresco 
in the Sistine Chapel, or the Cupid in Titian’s “Jupiter and 
Antiope.”- A radically different type of composition is achieved 
when the central mass is discarded entirely, as in Giorgione’s 
‘‘Concert Champétre,’’ and in some of the Assisi Giottos. In 
these pictures the elements are kept from falling apart by subtle 
relationships, by which the artist’s feeling for grouping is 
expressed. This ‘‘feeling for grouping’’ means a feeling for 
harmonious relationships, and it is a factor in plastic art which 
may vary independently of the other factors: in Raphael, for 
example, it is much better than his color. 

In a good painting all the factors are integrated, and compo- 
sition is one of these factors. Paintings of the highest value 
are composed with color, so that the two factors, composition 
and color, are blended. In the ‘Concert Champétre,’’ the 
color-rhythms bind the picture together, along with the sequence 
of line and mass. In Titian’s ‘‘'Entombment,”’ the color, rich, 
varied and deep, permeates the entire canvas and ties the units 
together. The colors in the cloaks of the bending figures, at 
the right and left of the central group, do the same thing for 
that group and function as a frame to enclose it. In Tintoretto’s 
‘Paradise,’ the rhythmic succession of color unites with the 
rhythm of line to give the effect of swirling movement which is 
the key-note of the picture’s design. So also in Piero della 
Francesca and Giotto, and this heightened integration makes 
their pictures more personal and individual. Here, as always, 
the greater the fusion of means the more living, convincing, real, 


128 THE “EB D'E MEN TSO srr aN ia 


individual, is the effect, and the farther removed from mechanism 
or academicism. 

Another constructive plastic element in composition, is light. 
Here, as with color, the light represented in various parts of the 
canvas often forms a design in itself. A figure or object func- 
tions quite differently according to its place in the design of 
light, which is a distinguishable but inseparable part of the plastic 
form. The design of light in Titian’s “Man with the Glove”’ 
is vital to the composition. _The composition, in other words, is 
an essential part of the total design, and must be judged as 
subsidiary to it; and this is the reason for the futility of all 
academic rules for judging composition in isolation. 

The lines which define the contours of objects have an impor- 
tant function in composition. In Poussin’s ‘“‘Les Aveugles de 
Jérico’’ and in Courbet’s ‘The Painter’s Studio,” the figures 
are held together not only by their placing with reference to a 
central point, but by lines carried over from one point to another. 
The whole composition flows, it is never static. When abstracted - 
the line is seen to form a design in itself which is made up of a 
series of subsidiary designs all merged with one another. This 
interweaving of line in combination with a central figure is very 
important in all closely knit compositions. In Raphael’s ‘Holy 
Family of Francis I’’ or Leonardo’s “ Virgin and St. Anne,” the 
figures, both as wholes and with reference to their parts, are 
focal points in a network of lines in three dimensions. The 
way in which linear patterns contrast with each other, rein- 
force each other, etc., may be infinitely varied according to 
the feeling of the painter for space-effects. In Uccello, this 
composition by line produces such a striking effect that it is the 
chief constructive element in the plastic form, which is clearly 
separable from and independent of the subject-matter. This 
again illustrates the necessity of judging all plastic elements in 
relation to design. Judged by academic standards, the Uccello’s 
would be uncomposed, but with the design in mind the relation 
of the parts to one another at once becomes apparent. Uccello’s 
form is of the abstract character one finds in a successfully real- 
ized cubist picture: that is, the design has little or nothing to do 
with representation of real objects. 

In composition, the individual figures, as masses, do not always 
operate as units. A whole group may function as a unit, and in 
powerful compositions on a large scale they do so. In that case 





Renoir Barnes Foundation 


Analysis, page 478 


( 129 ) 





Poussin Louvre 


Analysis, page 441 


( 130) 





Louvre 


Boucher 


(30) 





Chardin Louvre 


Analysis, page 455 


G132)) 


Cor Oost LON 133 


there is a subsidiary composition within the group, just as in a 
symphony we find several movements each one a composition 
in itself. For example, consider Giorgio’s ‘‘Rape of Europa,”’ 
in which the group of trees and foliage functions as a mass, 
and the individual branches, leaves, etc., make up a subordinate 
pattern within that mass. Similarly in Rembrandt’s ‘ Unmer- 
ciful Servant,’’ the three figures at the right are a single mass 
balancing the single figure at the left; within that mass the 
individual elements are clearly distinguished and make up an 
interesting composition in themselves. This subordinate com- 
position will in a great painting fit into and enhance the general 
design; in an inferior painting it may be good in itself, but it 
will fail to integrate with the total design. In the Botticelli 
“Moses Kills the Egyptian’’ (Analysis, page 403), there are two 
separate pictures which do not unify into a single composition; 
in Cosimo Rosselli’s ‘‘Pharaoh’s Destruction in the Red Sea,”’ 
a similar double theme does unify. (Analysis, page 418.) 
In Titian’s ‘‘Assumption”’ (Analysis, page 429), this integration 
of different groups is present in a very high degree, the rhythms 
of line and mass being reinforced by light, color, and space, all 
binding the picture together into a harmonious unity, with 
human values and plastic values perfectly merged. In Raphael’s 
“Transfiguration”’ (Analysis, page 407) this unity is much more 
superficial, is accomplished by more obvious means; yet the 
design is successful in both the Titian and the Raphael. These 
analyses indicate once again that the resolution of design into 
its elements and the study of the interaction of all the plastic 
means is the only method of approach to problems of plastic 
form. 

Transition to space-composition may be made if we consider 
relation of figures and masses to background. So far, all that 
has been said of composition could be applied to perfectly flat 
painting, but in work of the greatest aesthetic power many feat- 
ures of composition depend upon representation of the third 
dimension. Even in flat painting, as in Cimabue or Matisse, 
and in Manet, not everything depicted is shown as on the same 
plane, and there is a suggestion of spatial depth. The relation 
of a single head, as in a portrait, to what is back of it, should 
be considered a part of the composition of the picture. This 
relation is partly determined by color, partly by compositional 
means in the narrower sense. The design of lines in a portrait 


134 DHE EOE WEIN S © Oe aa N cia aes 


may be carried into the background, or there may be super- 
ficially no relation, as in the Pisanello ‘‘ Portrait of the Princess 
d’Este.’’ Here the design of trees and flowers which make up 
the background may seem plastically unrelated to the girl’s 
head; really, however the relation is an organic one. In Fra 
Filippo Lippi’s ‘‘ Virgin Adoring the Child,”’ the relation between 
the central figures and the background is exceedingly important, 
though the objects on the background are felt like the pattern on 
a screen. On the other hand the background may be extremely 
simple, as in Titian’s ‘‘Man with the Glove’’ or Rembrandt’s 
‘“‘Hendrickje Stoffels,”’ in both of which, by means that are 
very subtle, the figure is distinguished, set out from what is 
back of it. The effect of an infinity of space back of the figure 
achieved in both these pictures represents the consummation of 
masterly background-painting. In the Rubens’s portrait “The 
Baron Henri de Vicq,” though the placing of the head against 
the background is effective, the means employed, that is, sharply 
contrasting color, are obvious and more facile, and the lesser 
economy of means reduces the aesthetic value in comparison 
with the Titian and the Rembrandt. 

Space-composition is achieved largely through use of per- 
spective and is at its best when color is the chief constructive 
factor. But skillful perspective is not the same thing as effec- 
tive space-composition. ‘The difference is that in effective space- 
composition not only is the effect of depth rendered, but the 
intervals, the relations of distances, are intrinsically pleasing 
and represent a personal feeling instead of mere literal imitation. 
The mere representation of perspective has no closer relation 
to art than the work of the surveyor or civil engineer. Objects 
well composed in space are not huddled or crowded: each object 
is in its own space, each has elbow-room, no matter how small 
the space may be. Space is the element which establishes these 
relations between the objects, and they are an important source 
of aesthetic pleasure. 

In architecture and sculpture, where space is actually present, 
there is the same distinction between a vital, personal arrange- 
ment of spaces which gives the feeling of depth or extensity, and 
the inability really to conceive the object in three-dimensional 
terms. Primitive negro art shows this power of conception in 
three dimensions, while in much of Greek sculpture we feel the 
comparative lack of it. 


COMPOSITION Mines 


In composition in three dimensions, all the effects of two- 
dimensional composition are amplified. Thrust and counter- 
thrust, balance, rhythm, the effects of light and shadow, are 
heightened in variety and power. The sense of real space, 
harmoniously subdivided, appears in Claude, in Poussin, in 
Perugino, in Raphael, in all the great Venetians. In regard to 
space alone is Raphael in the class of the greatest masters. He 
and Perugino were doubtless influenced to achieve it by the 
natural landscape of Central Italy, in which effective space- 
composition is strikingly apparent. 

In Poussin’s ‘Funeral of Phocion’’ we have not only a clear 
indication of distance everywhere, but great beauty in the 
intervals themselves. The masses are related backward and 
forward and form a design which is an integral part of the 
general design made up of the other plastic elements. This 
design in space is reinforced by color both in its appealing quality 
and the relations of the colors to each other, and by line and 
light and shade; all these elements combine to give a distinc- 
tively clear, light, airy and charming design. In Giorgione’s 
“Concert Champétre,”’ the relation of all parts of the landscape 
to the blue and gold distance contributes greatly to the impres- 
sion of mystery, romance, and glamor. In Claude, the effects 
are more romantic, more majestic, and they would be impossible 
but for the unlimited spaciousness of his pictures, which gives 
reality to the vast designs of light. In addition, the ways in 
which the intervals are proportioned and related to one another 
are also immediately pleasing in themselves. A final example 
of space-composition is Giotto’s: his perspective, from the aca- 
demic standpoint, is very faulty, but he had the utmost genius 
for placing objects, in deep space, in relations which are varied, 
powerful, absolutely unstereotyped, but always appropriate and 
in harmony with the general design. 

Space-composition shares with the other plastic means the 
possibility of becoming academic, usually through overaccen- 
tuation. An example of this is found in Perugino’s Sistine fresco, 
in which the grouping of the figures and lines on the pavement 
are placed to get an effect of great roominess, and this too- 
obvious quality results in cheapness. In Turner’s ‘‘ Dido Build- 
ing Carthage,” there is the same overdramatization of space, 
but in this case the theft from Claude is so obvious that the 
picture is plagiaristic rather than academic. 





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BOOK III 


THE TRADITIONS OF PAINTING 


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CRA Pie Ret 


THE DAWN OF MODERN PAINTING 


IN order to show the general nature of the traditions which 
have played an important part in the development of painting, 
and how they are utilized and modified by individuals, it is 
necessary to consider briefly the historical aspects. Old tradi- 
tions constantly emerge in even the most recent painting, as, 
for example, Tintoretto in Soutine, the Persian miniatures in 
Matisse, etc. One can judge of the individuality and importance 
of a painter only by referring to the sources of his effects, and by 
observing how these effects are combined with those from other 
sources. If the artist is a real creator these effects pass through 
the crucible of his own personality and emerge as new forms. If 
the effects are seen to be destitute of organic relationships, the 
painter is a mere imitator, as in the case of academicians like 
Paxton or Redfield, or of an eclectic like Derain. 

Modern painting developed out of mosaics. These are sub- 
stantially in a single plane, that is, flat, and really amount to 
little more than colored patterns, with an illustrative appeal. 
Although many mosaics are positive creations of definite art 
value, their subject-matter is usually stereotyped or unreal, with 
little or no sign of personal expression. Convention was the 
rule and individual expression the exception. The aesthetic 
effects spring from color and line composed harmoniously into 
what is really decoration. The absence of light, modelling and 
perspective, and the use of a rigid line resulted in figures stiff and 
not individualized and in highly formal compositions, with very 
simple rhythms. 

Departure from this flat decorative pattern began with the 
gradual introduction of perspective, illumination and modelling, 
and their application to more realistic subject-matter, so that 
painting became more expressive, in the sense defined on pages 
30 and 39. This increasing expressiveness through command of 


\/ 


I40 THE TRA DIDYTONS TO Re Pah Naseer 


a greater number of plastic means, and increased personal feeling 
in the painter, will be traced in the course of the discussion. 


Cimabue took the first step in the transition to modern paint- 
ing by so modifying the Byzantine mosaic tradition as to engraft ~ 
upon it an individual expression. His painting is still in the 
main flat, but the beginning of sculptural form is observable, 
though it amounts to little more than a suggestion. In his pic- 
ture in the church at Assisi, and in a similar one in the Uffizi, 
there is the same Byzantine composition—a central figure and 
exact bilateral symmetry achieved by an equal number of figures 
on each side, with lines in each exactly balancing those in the 
corresponding figure on the opposite side. The contours are very 
sharp, that is, the drawing is purely linear, and the color is 
obviously laid on, with neither the Venetian structural use nor 
the merging shown in Giotto. The color is dark but pervasive, 
and there is effective color-harmony, partly due to the above- 
noted exact bilateral symmetry. The figures are static, with- 
out animation, and the expression of the faces is uniformly 
doleful and almost bovine, without individual variation. There 
is no perspective and the planes are few and close together. The 
stereotyped expression, the sharp line and the superficial color, 
with lack of realism in the figures and buildings, give the whole a 
painted rather than a real effect. The composition is beautifully 
balanced but it too remains inert. The design is good and the 
light and modelling are used well though in slight degree. There 
is skill in the employment of the traditional formulas, and the 
religious character of the subject-matter, in keeping with the 
spirit of the time and free from sentimentality, yields an austere, 
effective form which must be judged, in view of the state of 
plastic art at the time, as of considerable aesthetic importance. 
The design consists of a dignified rhythm both in the figures 
and in the component parts of the figures and objects. The 
Byzantine form is beginning to take on the qualities of life, but. 
it is still quite formal and comparatively unreal and other- 
worldly. | 


Giotto, perhaps the greatest painter of all time, whether he 
be judged by what he contributed technically or by the beauty 
of his creations, made the next step in the development, and it 


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Showing the swirl used by subsequent painters, including Tintoretto, 
El Greco, Rubens, Fragonard, Delacroix, Renoir, Pascin, etc. 


Analysis, page 397 


( 144) 


THE DAWN OF MODERN PAINTING 145 


was an enormous one. The transition from Cimabue is illus- 
trated strikingly in the Uffizi, where a Cimabue and a Giotto, 
in which the composition is essentially the same, hang in the 
same room. 

In the Giotto, the Byzantine tradition is shown in the formal 
design and the bilateral symmetry of composition. Its aesthetic 
value is increased by the intensification, amplification, and 
enrichment of color, which is jewel-like in quality and less 
obviously laid on. The color-harmony is pervasive and aids in’ 
unifying the picture. The light is used not only to heighten 
color, but to form with shadows a subsidiary design, as in the 
deepening of the folds of the gown. The tactile values are 
increased, and in spite of the static character of the picture 
it is much more realistic than the work of Cimabue. The 
decorative quality and rhythms are increased by the naturalistic 
duplication of textural effects, which also make possible special 
notes of color-harmonies. The ensemble effect is rich and 
extremely convincing: its reality is incomparably greater than 
the work of any other man up to that period. There is also a 
new contribution in the expression of the faces, in which the set 
dolefulness of Cimabue is replaced by a tendency towards 
beatification, which was later taken over by other artists. The 
use of perspective, though still relatively slight, is increasing; 
there are more planes and also a suggestion of space-composi- 
tion, though in this respect the gold haloes remain as an adven- 
titious aid. Although the spirit of the times is still in evidence, 
there is a decided advance toward naturalistic painting. Even 
though the technical means employed are still comparatively 
primitive, the development of these means by later artists is 
wonderfully forecasted. 

Giotto’s special qualities are best shown in the frescoes at 
Assisi and at Padua, and these are of such epic character that 
they are analyzed with considerable detail in the Appendix. 
The style in the earlier set at Assisi is quite different from that 
in the later ones at Padua, and they will be discussed separately, 
after which the essential Giotto note common to both will be 
pointed out. 

It will suffice here to state only those characteristics which 
have a bearing upon the relation between plastic means and the 
human values resulting from their effective use in rendering sub- 


146 FHE: TRADITIONS OF EAN DIGG 


ject-matter. Giotto is always direct and simple both in what 
he does with the plastic means and in the story he tells—they 
dovetail, go hand in hand, balance. We feel the rightness of 
everything. His originality is astounding, it seems never to be 
exhausted. This is seen at Assisi in the unusual methods of 
composition of separate objects, and at Padua in the variety of 
effects attained by means in themselves essentially the same. 
The result is an overpowering wealth of relationships of forms 
to one another. He abstracts the essence of real things and 
shows them to us by legitimate plastic means—a fine example 
of the rendering of human values in painting without regard 
for subject-matter. In appreciating Giotto, we may ignore the 
story, yet when we look for the story it is there, and told sim- 
ply and directly. It is dramatic in the best sense of the word, 
that is, it is vivid, real, moving. He renders deep universal 
human values by means of line, mass, pose, movement, planes, 
color of the highest quality, and marvellous use of light as 
illumination and design. As a draughtsman he had few equals: 
his line is tersely expressive of an infinite variety of unmistak- 
able meanings. Not, as in Botticelli, so decorative that we see 
chiefly the line; nor as in Ingres, forming a pattern or ara- 
besque; nor psychologically saturated as in Degas—Giotto’s 
line is all these and all in solution. His color is as moving 
aesthetically as it is in the Venetians and it moves us by the 
way it works in and around line, mass, space, to weave them 
into things distinct in themselves—a series of rhythmic designs 
that fuse into a plastic form of overwhelming aesthetic power. 
What Giotto means to us depends upon what we bring to his 
paintings in background and temperament. The stories he 
depicts are irrelevant. By sheer mastery of plastic means, he 
compels us to enter that union with the world which is the basis 
of religion, whether Pagan or Christian. Giotto was perhaps 
the greatest of all artists because he had that power in the 
highest degree. 

Those critics who laud the Padua frescoes at the expense of 
the earlier ones at Assisi, mistake the technical shadow for the 
aesthetic substance. What happened is, probably, that age 
brought to Giotto that loss of daring which often changes own- 
seeing and own-acting radicals generally into conservatives and 
formalists. His early Assisi frescoes represent a gifted, radical 


THE DAWN OF MODERN PAINTING 147 


use of means of his own invention. As he grew older, his com- 
position became more formal, and his highly individual effects, 
such as the pervasive color-light atmosphere, and the daring use 
of architectural units as main masses, came to be less in evi- 
dence. It is true that the Padua works are richer in the number 
and quality of forms made by the relations between the objects 
employed, as one would expect with time and increased techni- 
cal skill. But at Assisi there is a succession of massive aesthetic 
onslaughts that at first overwhelm, and then leave us astounded 
and delighted. The Padua ones charm by suavity of effects, 
rich, varied, and gentle, but they lack the Assisi monumental 
knockout power. 


CUR UAIP AVE Rak 


THE FLORENTINE TRADITION 


GIoTTO marks the beginning of the Florentine tradition. Its 
debt to him is enormous, for practically all the Renaissance 
methods find their origin in his work. Perspective opened up 
a world of values possible only by the utilization of deep space; 
modelling added the three-dimensional qualities to figures and 
endowed them with reality; atmosphere and color gave an added 
naturalistic quality to objects and situations which hitherto 
had been at the best merely symbolic. These elements—per- 
spective, space-composition, modelling, atmosphere and a new 
use of color—were each made the subject of special experimen- 
tation by later artists and yielded the brilliant results which we 
find in the high Renaissance. The artists each of whom added 
something definitely constructive to the ultimate results, were 
Masaccio, Leonardo, Uccello, Andrea del Castagno, Michel Angelo 
and Piero della Francesca. Although the last-named was not a 
Florentine he, like Raphael and other great men from all parts 
of Italy, had absorbed the developments that came from Florence 
and made them a part of a tradition which became universal. 
We can best appreciate the fundamental greatness of that tradi- 
tion if we note briefly the individual contributions of the various 
important Florentines. We shall see that practically all of the 
plastic means were enriched and that the traditions of modern 
and contemporary painting are in considerable measure modified 
versions of the contributions made by the early Florentines. We 
shall see the absurdity of Berenson’s statement that their chief 
contribution was effective figure painting which, he claims, owes 
its aesthetic significance to the rendering of “‘tactile values,’ an 
entirely subsidiary detail in plastic form. 


Masaccio, as the most important follower of Giotto, may be 
considered first. We are struck immediately by the increasing 
naturalism or realism in his work. His figures look more like 
actual people, less other-worldly than Giotto’s. His line is less 


OE FLORENTINE. TRADITION 149 


clean cut than Giotto’s, so that contours are blurred rather than 
sharp, and his drawing gives the feeling of natural movement. 
His line is clearly the origin of that of later great draughtsmen, 
such as Rembrandt, Goya, Daumier, Glackens, Pascin. It is 
realistic in the best sense, that is, imaginatively realistic, 
unburdened by literal representation. It catches the essence 
of a thing and expresses it tersely. Consequently, dramatic 
expression is rendered in good plastic terms; we see the drama, 
the intentness, as a reality, and feel its significance with no 
alloy of speciousness. That is true of Giotto also, but the 
means employed are different; in Masaccio the effects tend 
more towards the naturalism which increases as we recede from 
mediaeval painting. Perspective, which is vague or but lightly 
indicated in Giotto, becomes precise in Masaccio. Deep space, 
with its great possibilities of new effects and new values, becomes 
an added resource. Linear perspective, as such, is rarely a 
plastic element of much power; color must be added to give 
both space and perspective their greatest plastic significance. 
Masaccio used linear perspective with an emphasis that tended 
toward the literal representation of distance, but he used it 
with color in such a way that there is the effect not only of 
aerial perspective but of an atmospheric haze pervading the 
whole painting. His sombre color makes an atmosphere more 
evident than the Venetian glow, though it is rather a murky 
veil than a suffusion of color. It suggests Rembrandt, but is 
made up of color modified by light, rather than the definite con- 
trasts of light and shadow which constitute chiaroscuro. It is 
certain that in both Rembrandt and Masaccio there is a glamor, 
a mystery, and a feeling of austere dignity, due probably to a 
similar use of color, light and shadow. Occasionally, as in the 
small figure at the left in ‘‘St. Peter Healing the Sick,’’ Masaccio 
resorts to chiaroscuro as positive as that of Rembrandt and with 
results quite as satisfactory. It is possible that Rembrandt had 
noted Masaccio’s methods and was influenced by them. The 
atmospheric veil perceptible in Masaccio is clearly the precursor 
of the colored atmosphere so often found in later painters, notably 
Claude, and which the impressionists made one of the principal 
factors in their technique. Objects located in the middle dis- 
tance, and still more those in the background, are blurred in 
comparison with the relative clarity of those in the foreground. 
This rendering of the effects of distance as we have them in 
11 


I50 THE TRA DET LON S POA RP eA INy Dalits 


actual life again recalls the work of the impressionists, and again 
illustrates Masaccio’s realistic tendency. 

His advance toward modern painting is shown by the ocean tee 
use he made of light both in modelling and in the formation of 
a definite design. The solidity of figures achieved by his model- 
ling by means of light represents an advance over Giotto, and 
his accentuation of light is greater; both of these are steps 
toward greater realism as conceived by naturalistic painters. In 
short, Masaccio represented a positive advance over Giotto in 
the use of all the plastic means—line, color, perspective, space— 
toward a new plastic form of individuality and power. (See 
Appendix for detailed analysis of his plastic form.) 


In painting up’ to the time of Uccello, subject-matter had 
played an important role, but, as we have seen, a painter’s 
importance is to be judged by his ability to fuse subject-mat- 
ter with the plastic means. It has been emphasized repeatedly 
that aesthetic experience is purest when we disregard all asso- 
ciated ideas suggested by the subject-matter and confine our 
attention to the plastic form in which the story is embodied. 
Uccello proves the truth of that statement, for if we condemn 
him because of the quaint, the naive or the grotesque, repre- 
sented in his subject-matter, we miss entirely the artistic sig- 
nificance of his work. His obviously accentuated perspective 
has misled critics to patronize him as an inferior artist obsessed 
by perspective. The single protest against this misunderstand- 
ing is made by Roger Fry in his book Vision and Design. Our 
own notes, which were made before the publication of Mr. 
Fry’s essay, confirm his observations that Uccello is one of the 
great creators of the early Renaissance. We take exception, how- 
ever, to Mr. Fry’s intimation that Uccello’s unique plastic form 
is a by-product of his preoccupation with perspective instead of, 
as we believe, a clearly-felt purpose achieved by the intelligent 
and skillful use of all the plastic means, including perspective. 
His use of perspective is never such that he attempts to apply 
it to all the objects depicted. Instead, he deliberately selected 
certain objects and to only certain phases of them applied rigidly 
the laws of perspective. We see that same general principle 
used by Cézanne, Matisse and Picasso in dealing not only with 
perspective, but with other plastic means, when literal represen- 
tation of objects or situations is far from their intentions. An 


Be EerleDORWEN AEN Eo ER AD LT LOwN I51 


artist is great in proportion as he has the ability to select and 
modify phases or characteristics of real things and so to re- 
arrange them as to create a new form, a thing in itself, radically 
different from its original in nature. This was what Matisse 
meant when he said to a critic, who had remarked that he never 
saw a woman like the one Matisse had painted, “But it is not a 
woman—it is a painting.’”’ So with Uccello, his subject-matter 
is not like anything we have ever seen in the real world. In 
his “‘The Rout of San Romano,” the horses have the appear- 
ance of rocking-horses cavorting with exaggerated movements, 
and all the figures have a rigidity quite non-human. The lack of 
realism is heightened by a tendency in the background to recede 
not naturally but suddenly toward the top of the picture. This 
handling of background was taken over by the great men of the 
middle of the Nineteenth Century, Manet, Renoir, Cézanne, Pis- 
sarro, who increased the power of their design by abolishing the 
more or less literal representation of distance which had been cur- 
rent in most of the painters up to that time. In short, we can say 
that Uccello used perspective deliberately to establish a new and 
more moving relation of things to each other; in other words, to 
achieve a design, a plastic form, of his own creation. His success in 
that respect entitles him to a very high place among painters even 
of the great era in which he lived. If we disregard the narrative 
in his battle-scenes in which nobody is fighting, and look at the 
lines of the stiff figures, spears and stafis, of the placing of the 
objects in deep space, we find an interplay between the colored 
rectangular planes and the rounded contours of unrealistic 
objects, which establish a series of relationships of such rich 
aesthetic reward that we never think of the subject-matter. 
The exaggerated, unrealistic dramatic movement is merely a 
novel and highly successful means of forming a design the ele- 
ments of which, line, color, space and mass, function plastically. 
Uccello’s form is primarily that of bizarreness, and like all aes- 
thetic forms it is to be judged as a thing in itself, purely by its 
effect aesthetically. Critics who treat Uccello as simply an 
experimenter in perspective paving the way for later artists who 
used perspective more realistically, show an utter confusion of 
the history of technique with plastic criticism. 


Another Florentine whose importance has been inadequately 
recognized is Andrea del Castagno. His distinction is due not 


152 THE TRAD TAO WN S407 SPACING 


so much to skillful use of the plastic means of his predeces- 
sors, as to his ability to endow these means with a new note of 
power and strength in design. In the house at Florence which 
is reserved for his work, we see a whole series of frescoes which 
proclaim that distinction and strength. There also, we find a 
fresco, said to be by one of his unknown followers, which is so 
rich in the successful use of plastic means in the style of the 
master, that a detailed analysis of it is given in the Appendix. 
His ‘‘Pieta’’ producesan impression of moving aesthetic power akin 
to that of Michel Angelo, but it is executed with much simpler 
means and without obvious muscular accentuations. We feel 
its reality, its power and charm, and recognize their source in 
a wonderful series of relationships between masses and spaces 
which are interlaced by the dignified, balanced, simplified use of 
line, light and color. In contrast to this simplicity, “‘The Last 
Supper” gives the same effect of strength and power through 
the medium of an infinite series of forms of much greater com- 
plexity. It would be difficult to find, aside from El Greco’s, a 
painting composed of greater variety of intricate designs formed 
by the harmonious relation of line, light, color and space. There 
is a complex and moving design in each of the figures, in all 
parts of the figures, hands, heads, etc., in the table and all its 
parts, in the wall, in the textiles, chairs and floor. We can trace. 
_ separate designs in light, line, space, color and we feel the rhythm, 
the throb, as these separate designs flow and fuse into each other 
and into the total plastic design. This astounding richness of 
forms is pervaded by deep and rather dark colors, which enhance 
the effect of abstract dignity, solemnity, austerity and power. 


Fra Filippo Lippi is not generally considered to be among 
the monumental figures of early Florentine painting, but it seems 
to us that he has a form which is uniquely his own and which, 
in certain respects, allies him to modern and contemporary 
painting. He has neither the rich imaginative power of Giotto, 
the strength of Andrea del Castagno, nor the realism of Masaccio. 
When compared with the work of these or even lesser men, Lippi’s 
conceptions are usually stereotyped and lacking in personal dis- 
tinction. Yet his effects are often charming and, in at least two 
of his paintings, quite individual and significant from the stand- 
point of modern design. His ability to place a figure or a group 
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lar effect, is almost unique among the early painters. His forte 
lay in making a foreground and a background of apparently dis- 
parate qualities, and yet linking them into an organic whole so 
subtly that only one experienced in observing modern painting 
will recognize the essential unity of the picture. The point is 
illustrated by his ‘Virgin Adoring the Child,” in the Uffizi. 
Nearly all of the centre of the foreground is occupied by good- 
sized figures of the virgin and child, in color which is very bril- 
liant, but delicate, and laid on, that is, not used structurally as 
a part of the figure. The line of the two figures is superbly real- 
ized, is rhythmically varied and reinforced in its fluid power by 
the delicacy of color which harmonizes well with the rhythmic 
line. The background is developed chiefly by accentuation of 
perspective, with equal distinctness of the outlines of both near 
and remote objects, which latter rise toward the top of the can- 
vas. The effect of this background is rather that of a screen than 
of a representation of realistic perspective, and that effect is 
increased and made very complex by the great number of objects 
represented. The color of the background is in general effect 
dark—greens, browns, deep yellows with only an occasional slight 
and scattered note of brightness. This screen-like background, 
loaded with various objects, painted in realistic detail, is crystal 
clear, and free from any suggestion of the atmosphere or glow 
which is so often used to unite foreground and background. It 
is, therefore, a multiplicity of planes packed close together and 
not separated as we would find them in a distance obviously 
considerable, if interpreted by the symbols of literal perspective. 
The plastic problem faced was to unite a simple foreground made 
up of a large central mass in brilliant and delicate colors with a 
complex background, rather dull and sombre in color, containing 
a large number of objects all treated realistically except from 
the standpoint of perspective. In looking at the painting as a 
whole, we see a bright, large-sized figure, against a dark back- 
ground containing many objects too large for their supposed dis- 
tance from the eye, and out of place in perspective. That-is, we 
see the foreground as a picture and the background as a second 
picture, which seem unrelated to each other. If we attempt to 
judge the painting either by realistic standards or by the plastic 
form of any previous painter, we are likely to say that it is com- 
posed of two disparate elements that cannot be unified. But if 
we reject these standards and look at the painting as something 


158 THE ST RA DOD TOWN 37170 PRAT Nie 


in itself, to be resolved into its plastic elements, we realize that 
the painting represents a new form of contrast. We see the 
foreground and background neither as such nor as figures, 
objects, or anything realistic. We note that the mass which the 
figures constitute is loaded with values of color and light, of 
silver, pink and blue, and of fluid, rhythmic line; that is, we 
perceive it as a rhythm. The background functions as a num- 
ber of colored planes, highly complex, which move in space, in and 
around each other and effect a series of rhythmic relationships. 
We see in the new form made up of both foreground and back- 
ground, a unity of rhythms in which all the elements, color, 
line, space, participate. If we may use a seemingly paradoxical 
expression, the painting is a unity of disparate, contrasting 
rhythms. We may note similar effects in the impressionists, 
and to a larger degree in the work of Matisse and other con- 
temporary painters. 


In contrast to the foregoing Florentines, whose skillful use of 
legitimate plastic means entitle them to be classed as creators, 
Jet us consider briefly the work of another Florentine, Fra 
Angelico, whom the public, as well as most critics, consider a 
great master. Viewed from the standpoint of art there is little 
in Fra Angelico’s work to arrest the attention. He was really 
an eclectic who represented a regression from the men who 
lived up to high standards, from whom he took the plastic ideas 
which he never succeeded in merging into a powerful and dis- 
tinctive form. His line is that of his master Lorenzo Monaco, 
from whom he took also much of his pattern and considerable 
of his color. It is true that Fra Angelico made that color more 
pleasing sensuously, but he rarely succeeded in making color 
function organically in a painting. Color remained a series of 
staccato ejaculations. These often reinforce linear representa- 
tion and sometimes make pleasing patterns. But the latter 
remain things apart which serve no purpose in promoting or 
effecting plastic unity. In the exceptions where his composition 
is satisfactory from the standpoint of ordered arrangement of 
objects, there is little or no evidence of originality. His use of 
perspective is either perfunctory or an overaccentuation of the 
manner of Masaccio or Uccello, and the effect is unconvincing 
aesthetically. The spacing is fairly good but the figures function 
compositionally only as elements in groups; individually they 


THE FLORENTINE TRADITION 159 


have little bearing upon the general design. His use of light is 
successful in attaining a modelling which is specious rather 
than convincing, and there is but little distinction in the design 
formed by light. His plastic short-comings are made more 
evident by the nature of his subject-matter, the appeal of which 
is narrative or sentimental. Fra Angelico is a good example of 
how technical skill can be combined with lack of the ability to 
use it to produce a distinctive plastic form. His popularity is 
due to the illustration of themes of deep religious feeling, and not 
to his power to convey them in good plastic terms. His drama 
is literary, not plastic, and it seems, therefore, unreal. While we 
see an abundance of detail, we see that it is mere expressive detail, 
treated diffusely and largely by means of line which approaches 
literal reproduction of the actual manifestations of such senti- 
ments as fear, humility, piety, abnegation, suffering. All this 
substitution of literary values for plastic equivalents is uncon- 
vincing; we feel it as affectation, sentimentality, unreality. The 
expression is out of all proportion to the plastic means employed, 
so that while skillful as illustration, it is superficial as art of the 
pretensions it assumes. In general, the best we can say of the 
vast majority of his paintings is that they offer a pattern of 
harmonious colors which serves as a setting for a sentimental 
story told in terms that are literary rather than plastic. Occa- 
sionally, as in the ‘“‘Crucifixion’’ (Analysis, page 394) and the 
‘““Transfiguration”’ from the “‘Life of Jesus,’’ Fra Angelico attains 
distinction by the legitimate use of plastic means. 


Piero della Francesca, while of Umbrian birth, may be regarded 
as Florentine, because he develops largely from Giotto and is 
free from the eclecticism that characterizes the Umbrians in 
general. 

Piero is of interest primarily for his design, both in his pictures 
as wholes, and in their parts. His subject-matter has compara- 
tively little of the intense religious elevation of Giotto, or of the 
dramatic intensity of Andrea del. Castagno. His attitude 
towards it is one of cool detachment, and the effect is one of 
composure and dignity. These results he obtains by the skilled 
use of plastic means, of which the most important and charac- 
teristic is color. The basis of his color-scheme is a cool blue, 
which pervades everything, and is so effectively though subtly 
varied with light and related to other colors, that its variety 


160 THE YE RA DITIONS OH ea ENgie lie 


seems infinite. This blue is probably the single note that is 
uniquely, inimitably his own, and it produces powerful varied 
aesthetic effects both by itself and by its relations to other ele- 
ments of his design. The quality of the blue is tremendously 
moving; wherever he puts it, it animates the picture; it is not 
a mere sensuous note, but a positive form. He uses it frequently 
in association with a series of whites that have the quality of 
rich old ivory and form surfaces of marvellous charm. In com- 
parison with this blue, his other colors, such as red and brown, 
approach the conventional; but into objects whose color, for 
example, green or purple, has a general feeling-tone akin to that 
of blue, he infuses a unique vitality that functions actively in 
reinforcing other dynamic plastic relations. This blue is so 
infinitely varied by light, and particularly used in relation to 
space, that it is really many kinds of blue, yet upon analysis the 
general feeling-tone enables one to recognize it as basically the 
same blue, infinitely varied. 

This achievement of an exceedingly rich color-effect by means 
of the greatest simplicity—the way he makes that color function 
sometimes as a mass, sometimes as the element that gives space 
its distinctive character, and sometimes as the means of unifying 
compositional elements—this shows Piero’s rank, as an artist. 
His blues accomplish ‘something comparable with Rembrandt’s 
achievement in chiaroscuro. The color is not juicy, as with 
Rubens; not jewel-like, varied and yet blended into a suffusion 
so subtle as to escape anyone but a connoisseur, as with Giotto. 
But it is extraordinarily adapted to his design, and establishes a 
distinctive form, in which it functions through harmonies and 
contrasts, and also aids in modelling, composition and move- 
ment. It is not of the airy Eighteenth Century French quality 
but while it carries weight it is not heavy; it is just real, con- 
vincing, quietly powerful. 

His composition, like Giotto’s, is on a large scale, and shows 
great power of making unified design in spite of disregard of 
academic rules. His masses are often distributed in unorthodox 
fashion, but are always effectively welded into a single composi- 
tion. Like the greatest masters, he accomplishes this welding by 
the aid of all the plastic means—light, line, and especially color. 
Often a spot of light functions as a mass, as in the “ Exaltation of 
the Cross,’’ where it is combined with blue in a pattern of clouds. 
His space-composition is not as striking as that of Perugino and 


Wee Ro NT NE DRA DET LON 161 


Raphael; but every plane is clear-cut and distinguished from 
every other plane, and no matter what the complexity of the 
work the number of planes is never increased to the point of 
confusion. Even in battle scenes, while there is a complex, 
striking design, there is no confusion. As an aesthetic effect, 
Piero’s space-composition is in many ways better than either 
Perugino’s or Raphael’s because it does not jump out as accentu- 
ation, but is merged with the other plastic means; it is more varied, 
and color adds quite a particular charm to the spatial intervals. 
His command over light as an element of design is especially 
noticeable; he uses it both to make a design in itself and to aid in 
modelling. All the objects in his pictures swim in a lovely quiet 
light, enriched and varied with color. His lighting of figures is 
never obtrusive; even when he accentuates it, he obtains a qual- 
ity of color in gowns, etc., which is so effectively heightened by the 
light design that we get an impression not of overemphasis but 
of more powerful reality. He models with light and color so 
subtly that it is often difficult to see how the three-dimensional 
character is attained. The faces often seem to be cast in one 
piece in which light and shadow and color are scarcely dis- 
tinguishable; but of their solid, three-dimensional character, 
there can be no doubt. 

Piero’s drawing is such that it gives the effect of rigidity to the 
arms, heads, etc., which is not felt as a draw-back, but as a 
charm, and indeed a strong contributing factor to the idea of 
graceful naivete; it makes a design appealing in itself regardless 
of subject-matter. In this he owes nothing to the Greeks, whose 
line was more fluid, and tended towards sweetness even in the 
great period. The ensemble of these effects gives a design of 
great distinction, of which the key-note is coolness, detachment, 
power. Subject-matter is rendered in good plastic terms free 
from literary values. Although he simplified and discarded 
photographic detail, and although he was not a realist, he suc- 
ceeded extremely well in giving the essence of things by means 
properly plastic. One must be familiar with Piero’s work to 
appreciate Cézanne, Renoir and Prendergast. 


With Botticelli, Leonardo, Raphael, Mantegna and Michel 
Angelo, the influence of antique Greek and Roman art becomes 
the dominant one in Renaissance painting. The flowing line of 
Greek sculpture was so much the vogue that nearly all the 

12 


162 THEM DRADITIONS) 0 PEAT Nis 


painters used it as the basis of their individual expression. It 
was Botticelli’s chief source in achieving magnificent decorations. 
Leonardo used it, accompanied by the rather cloying sweetness 
characteristic of late Greek sculpture, and went even further 
toward the sculptural effects of the ancient Greeks in his pre- 
occupation with modelling. In Michel Angelo, the conception 
is almost more sculptural than pictorial. 


Botticelli’s line is extremely expressive and rhythmic, but it 
lacks the reinforcement by the other plastic elements necessary 
in painting of real importance. His color, which is almost uni- 
formly either dull or garish, offers only the superficial pleasing- 
ness of feeble color-combinations. It has no structural value as 
it has in the Venetians, and no organic or functional power as 
it has in Giotto or Piero della Francesca. His compositions 
are usually conventional and lack both originality and convic- 
tion. In his ‘‘Moses Kills the Egyptian,’ the composition falls 
apart; in his “Birth of Venus,’ the composition aims at sim- 
plicity but achieves incongruity by overdecoration of the few 
component structural elements. By the skilled use of light, of 
space, and graceful fluid line, he sometimes ‘secures a design 
of considerable beauty, but it is much more a pattern than a 
design made up of varied plastic units. As an artist he is medi- 
ocre because his means are limited. He was a master of line 
but he had no fine discrimination in using it; for example, in 
his big religious pictures, his swirling line gives a feeling of virtu- 
osity instead of the richer values accessible through a command 
over all the plastic means. His line builds a series of arabesques 
of much charm in their rhythmic movements; but that is pure 
decoration because it is an accentuation of a detail which stands 
out in isolation instead of being merged with the other plastic 
elements into a design which functions as a whole. A compari- 
son of his “Spring’’ with Francesco di Giorgio’s ‘‘Rape of 
Europa”’ reveals the difference between rhythmic line reinforc- 
ing other elements, and the same line in Botticelli exaggerated 
to the point of obscuring them. As with Leonardo and Raphael, 
much of the popular appeal of Botticelli rests upon illustration 
rather than plastic value. 


Leonardo is one of the great outstanding figures in art, but 
his popularity is due chiefly to factors that have little to do 


ere es OR EN Te Ns ROA DILTON 163 


with art. He was a scientist more than an artist, and while his 
researches produced results that have had an enormous influence 
on painting since his time, those results tended toward the 
academic as much as toward real creation. Most of what is 
bad in Raphael is due to the influence of Leonardo, and what 
was positively constructive in Leonardo’s contributions was soon 
academized by his followers into a formula which has served as 
a counterfeit of art for several centuries. Leonardo himself 
derived from the Greeks and. from Verrocchio, but what he 
absorbed was reworked by his own powerful mind into a new 
and definite form. His positive contribution was a manipula- 
tion of line and light into a modelling of figures whose three- 
dimensional qualities are of convincing reality. In this, how- 
ever, the central idea came from the Venetian, Giovanni Bellini. 
Leonardo’s craftsmanship was so defective that he rarely seems 
to be able to control his medium. In his Uffizi ‘‘ Annunciation,” 
the actual painting has the quality of ordinary fence-painting. 
His real status as an artist is revealed best by a comparison of 
his sketch ‘‘The Adoration of the Magi,” with almost any of 
his finished paintings. The sketch reveals his fine sense of 
composition and his great command over space, light and line. 
It is merely a skeleton, but it is so rich in elements harmoni- 
ously combined into a strong plastic unity that it has greater 
aesthetic value than the majority of his finished paintings. In 
it we see what Leonardo could do in constructing design, and 
we are able to judge how much he lost from his design by his 
frequent failure to apply paint skillfully, and by his overem- 
phasis of light in modelling and in the general design. Although 
his color is sometimes moving, as it is to a certain extent in 
“Mona Lisa,’”’ it is usually indifferent, so that the shadows are 
dull and the paint almost muddy. This defect is apparent in 
some measure in what is perhaps his best finished painting, 
““Bacchus,”’ and even in the above-mentioned sketch there is a 
suggestion of muddiness about the shadows. His line, though 
vigorous, is constantly overaccentuated, as in the “St. John the 
Baptist,’ and so is his light. It is the overaccentuation of light 
that produces the melodramatic tinge so constantly present in 
his work, which is to be seen in both the London and the Paris 
versions of ‘‘La Vierge aux Rochers.’’ He was rarely able to 
make light function economically and subtly and as a real equiva- 
lent for color, as did Rembrandt. When he uses light and color 


164 PoE? TOR ASDA TT ONS 0) Boe ALN | ees 


together, the light seems to be laid on and does little or nothing 
to animate, enrich, and heighten the color-effects, as it does in 
Rembrandt, Giorgione or the other great colorists. 

Leonardo’s chief claim to be considered an artist was his 
ability to conceive design, but he was rarely able to carry out 
the design to form a finished picture of balanced plastic values. 
To give expressiveness, he abstracted line and light from their 
legitimate place in the ensemble of plastic means and debased 
them to portrayal of the adventitious literary, narrative, or 
sentimental aspects of subject-matter. There are rarely to be 
found in his work plastic equivalents for the human values of 
subject-matter, as we find them in Giotto, Titian, Tintoretto 
or Rembrandt. We find instead preoccupation with solidity of 
figures, indifferent color, rather tight line, a tendency to over- 
lighting, and these elements so used throw into relief subject- 
matter in which excessive sweetness of expression is almost the 
constant feature. Walter Pater’s essay on ‘Mona Lisa”’ is an 
unwittingly fine exposition of how well an artist can be revealed 
in his true essence by brilliant writing that never comes within 
sight of the plastic qualities of his work. 


Michel Angelo. A spectator need be sensitive only to the 
effects encountered in the everyday world to be literally over- 
whelmed with a feeling of power when he enters the Sistine 
Chapel and directs even a first glance at the altar or ceiling. 
There can be no doubt of that feeling nor of the fact that it is 
caused by the Michel Angelo frescoes. We know that an 
abstract feeling can be communicated by a work of art, and we 
can reasonably infer that the aesthetic feeling in general is in a 
large measure tinged with something pervasive that is essentially 
abstract. Certain it is that the form of Michel Angelo is pri- 
marily that of power. In our search for the causes we find that 
the feeling of power is conveyed with simplicity and directness, 
and supported by an exceedingly strong feeling for design. As 
we proceed with an analysis of the means, we note modelling 
with light and shadow, and accentuation of muscular contours 
in the figures. We see that the sources of his inspiration were 
Greek sculpture, and also the paintings of Pollaiuolo, Verrocchio, 
Signorelli and Cosimo Tura; but these influences are incorpo- 
rated in a form which is Michel Angelo’s own creation. 

He is an example of how a comparatively limited repertoire of 


UHR SELOREN TUNE TRADITION 165 


technical means can be free from overemphasis and merged into 
a total plastic form of the highest grade. The means in his 
case are light and shadow, welded into three-dimensional solidity 
which is the main factor in his rhythmic and effective designs, 
both in individual figures and in the composition as a whole. 
Subsidiary to this is another design made by the muscular 
accentuations, which unifies with the main design and contributes 
to its strength. This design is so varied in the series of frescoes 
in the Sistine Chapel that there is no suggestion of monotony. 
In consequence, his limited means are analogous in results to 
the chiaroscuro of Rembrandt, as a simple source of indefinitely 
varied effects. Michel Angelo’s color-scheme is chiefly founded on 
a dark blue; but within the limits of this color the variation is 
sufficient to make the pervasive color an adjunct to the masses 
in composition, although it is not used structurally as in the 
Venetians. 

His line is extremely vigorous and terse, and is so broken up 
and related to other lines that it has a positive decorative quality 
which usually fuses with the structural value of the line and 
enhances the total aesthetic effect. At times there is lack of 
perfect fusion and the resulting overdecorative effect detracts 
from the strength of the plastic unit. Like Raphael, Michel 
Angelo is a great illustrator, but in spite of the dramatic themes 
of his frescoes, we are rarely conscious, as with Raphael, of a 
disbalanced melodrama. In his ‘Last Judgment,” all is done 
with force and dignity, and the story and the plastic means are 
well codrdinated. This results in the realization of a powerful 
design of three-dimensional forms, moving in rhythmically 
ordered space, in which color pervades and reinforces the power. 
The dramatic movement is thus attained without the stridency 
seen often in Rubens and usually in Delacroix. Power is the 
key-note, it is the foundation stone upon which rests the inten- 
sity, the exaltation, the terror, that give to these frescoes their 
unique moving force. 

In spite of all of Michel Angelo’s greatness we are conscious 
of a feeling that his rank as an artist is lower than that of 
Giotto and the great Venetians. We feel that there is a delib- 
erate striving for effects not strictly within the limits of paint- 
ing, which partake of the nature of illustration. It is certainly 
true that his imagination was sculptural and the range of his 
means in painting was quite restricted when compared with 


166 THE WS RASD PE LOS © Page Ne eps 


that of other great painters. He had also a gift for writing 
poetry which has the intensity and exaltation that pervade the 
Sistine frescoes. It seems that one detects even in his great 
frescoes the claims of the sculptor and of the literary poet in 
conflict with the proper function of the painter. At any rate, 
his paintings do not realize the scope of effects possible in paint- 
ing as do those of Giotto, Giorgione, Rembrandt, Velasquez, or 
Renoir. He was indeed a great artist and no other painter so 
fully conveys the idea of abstract power. The criticism that 
seems justified is that the results he produced were alloyed with 
effects from other means than those legitimate to painting. 


Raphael had wide knowledge of what other painters had con- 
tributed to art, an extraordinary facility and ability to use paint, 
a fine sense of design, an unsurpassed feeling for space-compo- 
sition, and he was in active contact with a rich and vital civiliza- 
tion. But his work, judged by what it contains of plastic value, 
reveals the perfect example of a first-rate virtuoso who was far 
from being a first-rate artist. His superlative skill and knowl- 
edge enabled him to obtain striking effects, but he was in reality 
an eclectic, even though his works have a characteristic Raphael 
quality. The origin of what he has to say is always discoverable, 
and his borrowings are not fully modified into a creation of his 
own. The more one studies Raphael, the less he seems original, 
and the more his grace, charm and skill are seen to be superficial 
and indicative of unreality. 

His command of plastic means was very unequal. His good 
sense of design and his fine feeling for the ordered sequence of 
objects on the same planes and in deep space are left without 
adequate support. His color is almost uniformly thin, dry 
and drab, even when bright; it is without structural quality, 
and without unifying effect on the composition. His lack of feel- 
ing for color makes his light seem unreal, because when light 
falls upon color it not only fails to animate it but heightens the 
effect of its thinness, dryness and superficiality. This defect 
was Leonardo’s also, and Raphael took it over in its entirety. 
His drawing is done almost entirely by a line that was taken 
from Greek sculpture and from Verrocchio’s and Botticelli’s 
attenuated version of the classic spirit. Though his line is 
incisive, graceful and varied, it is isolated from color, so that it 
detracts from reality. It is line preoccupied in defining contour 


tte Pals Rob, NOD TN By TRAD eT TOWN 167 


of a literal expressiveness, and consequently it lacks the power 
that an added terseness would give. This linear overemphasis, 
inability to use color, and unbalanced use of light, all contribute 
to make his figures lack conviction as real things. 

His compositions, while skillfully executed, are essentially the 
formalized ones of Leonardo; they lack real vigor, are usually 
of the conventional bilaterally balanced type, and are unaided by 
color. From Leonardo also he borrowed the method of using 
light and the sentimental sweetness, but he was unable to take 
over the reality of Leonardo’s modelling. His greatest accom- 
plishment, effective space-composition, came directly from 
Perugino. It stands out as an accentuation, especially when an 
attempt is made to merge it into an organic design in which 
the other badly-used plastic elements must enter. The con- 
sequence of all these deficiencies is that when we analyze the 
design which strikes us at first glance as effective, we find that 
the plastic form never really hangs together. Instead of plastic 
unity we find virtuosity and eclecticism. 

Raphael was a great illustrator, but his illustration instead of 
supplementing plastic form constantly supplanted it. The pas- 
sage of time has dimmed the interest of his subject-matter for the 
person of non-antiquarian culture. It depicts an excess of unap- 
pealing drama, as in “St. Michael Crushing Satan’’ and in the 
‘“Entombment,’’ or an inane sweetness and sentimentality, as 
in nearly all his Madonnas. The subject-matter brings clearly 
into relief the spuriousness of his effects and the lack of per- 
sonal force in other respects which we feel throughout his work. 
As an illustrator he is inferior to Michel Angelo of his own 
period, to Goya, Daumier or Degas of the last century, and 
to Picasso, Glackens or Pascin of our own age, all of whom give 
the essentials of a situation plastically and with conviction. 
Like Leonardo, Raphael relied upon the relatively trivial, adven- 
titious, and literary. In all his work, there is a Greek feeling that 
makes it seem artificial, formalized, devoid of spontaneity. All 
these unorganized and indiscriminately selected elements make 
his paintings seem spotty, an effect which is increased by the fact 
that even his best organized pictures are better painted in some 
parts than in others. In short, we rarely find in Raphael a 
powerful, original conception, uniformly and adequately rendered 
in plastic terms. He will always be the ideal of those who seek 
in art the easily accessible, the agreeable and superficial; that is, 


168 THE TRADLTLONS? OF PPA NENG 


the antithesis of profundity and real personality. His appeal 
is to facile sentimentalism that has little to do with art but 
which offers a fertile field for critics who delight in flights of 
irrelevant rhetoric. 


SUMMARY OF THE FLORENTINE FORM 


Florentine painting starts from Giotto. In Giotto’s DESIGN the 
essential points are an intensely expressive, terse line, novel and 
powerful composition, and a uniquely effective use of color. 
The result is a series of relationships, probably richer in plastic 
content than the work of any painter before or since his time. 
The feeling for design is present in all the great Florentines, 
Masaccio, Andrea del Castagno, Uccello, Piero della Francesca, 
Leonardo, Michel Angelo and Raphael. It is to be seen in a 
less powerful form in Fra Filippo Lippi; in Botticelli, it has 
become attenuated to a linear decorative pattern; in Fra 
Angelico it has fallen away to little more than a set of pleasant 
color-relations; in Ghirlandaio, it has gone almost completely 
to pieces. In the most important members of the school the 
COMPOSITION is almost invariably good but in Botticelli, Leonardo 
and Raphael it tends to academicism. In Masaccio and Piero 
della Francesca it is almost as original and powerful as in Giotto, 
and in them as in him it is reinforced by light and color, as it is 
also in Michel Angelo. 

COLOR is at its best in Giotto, who alone among the Florentines 
used it as effectively as the Venetians, though in a totally differ- 
ent manner. In Piero della Francesca, feeling for color compares 
well with that of any other painter, but his limited palette makes 
his works less variedly rich than those of Giorgione and Titian. 
In Masaccio, the color is neither very rich nor bright but he 
gave it a new function by combining it with light to produce 
that aerial perspective and atmospheric effects which contributed 
to an intense realism. Michel Angelo’s color, although secon- 
dary to anatomical depictions, is pleasing in itself and functions 
organically in the plastic form. The Florentine use of color, and 
the Florentine form in general, may be described as relatively 
austere in comparison with the Venetian. Even when the color 
is at its best, as in Giotto, it has not the rich, juicy, glowing 
character of the Venetian: it is more ethereal, jewel-like or 


Pie ehOREN- PUNE, TRAD TT LON 169 


cool than luscious and warm. There is no Florentine who has 
the sensuous splendor of Tintoretto or Titian, or whose color 
gives the abstract feeling of power which those great colorists 
achieved. The Florentines dealt much more with religious 
subject-matter than the Venetians, so that their concerns were 
more remote from human affairs. This remained true even when 
the dominant religious motive was modified by the classical. 
In the incorporation in plastic art of human values, especially 
of the more natural, spontaneous kind, they were therefore 
inferior to the Venetians, as we shall see in our discussion of 
the Venetians in the next chapter. 

DRAWING was developed by the Florentines to a high degree 
of perfection, although the comparative neglect of color as an 
element in line makes their draughtsmanship less effective than 
that of later painters. In Giotto the use of pervasive color 
minimized this deficiency of the other Florentines. In Masaccio 
and Piero della Francesca there is some use of color in the crea- 
tion of line, and Michel Angelo’s drawing is at least well merged 
with his color; but in Botticelli, Leonardo and Raphael, color 
and line remain quite distinct. Even in Andrea del Castagno, 
whose line is terse, vigorous, and made more powerful by the 
use of a swirl akin to that developed later by Rubens, the color- 
constituent in line is comparatively lacking. 

The general effect of Florentine form is that of delicacy, while 
that of later men, like Titian, Tintoretto and Rubens, is robust- 
ness. This delicacy tends to weakness in Raphael, to mere 
decoration in Botticelli, to sentimentality in Leonardo, to a 
miniature-effect in Fra Filippo Lippi. It is a part of Piero della 
Francesca’s coolness; it is illustrated in a very successful picture 
by Albertinelli, ‘‘Christ Appearing to Magdalen;’’ but in every 
case it distinguishes them from the more full-blooded Venetians. 
This same delicacy appears in the Florentine use of light, even 
when it is weakened by overaccentuation, as in Leonardo and 
Raphael, or combined with color to make atmosphere, as in 
Masaccio: it never has the feeling of reality that it has in Rubens. 
In space-composition, the airiness of Giotto, of Piero della Fran- 
cesca, and of Raphael has a delicacy that is comparatively absent 
in Claude or Cézanne. 

In short, the Florentine form at its best is constituted by a 
strong sense of design, executed in delicate, harmonious, but not 
structurally used color, with expressive line, convincing model- 

13 


170 THE TRADITIONS) Os Pantalones 


ling, effective lighting, and rhythmic, spacious composition. 
The ways in which individual painters added characteristic con- 
tributions of their own to this form, or allowed it to become 
unbalanced, weakened and cheapened, have already been indi- 
cated, and are further described in the analyses in the Appendix. 

The obviously numerous and important characteristics of the 
Florentine form show the one-sidedness of Berenson’s estimate 
of their principal achievement in painting. He asserts that this 
is their realization of ‘‘tactile values,” that is, the effect of solid- 
ity in masses. It is true that this effect does appear in Giotto, 
but along with many effects of far greater aesthetic significance. 
It is to be found further developed in Masaccio, but so are aerial 
perspective, atmosphere and other elements of realism which 
influenced profoundly the whole subsequent history of painting. 
It is most apparent in Leonardo, but even in him it is secondary 
in aesthetic significance to his general sense of design. When 
tactile values do appear as the sole or outstanding quality of 
his pictures, the fact constitutes a defect and not a virtue. 
Berenson’s estimate of that one element as the chief contribu- 
tion of the Florentines indicates that he overlooks the importance 
of design in the largest sense, of delicate, pervasive color, of 
rhythmic movement of various plastic units, and of light in 
many roles other than as an element in modelling. And to 
overlook those elements is to miss the aesthetic significance of 
painting. 

It remains to relate the Florentine contribution to art to that 
of subsequent painters. Giotto’s work has in it the germof most 
of what gives modern art its value. Other members of the 
Florentine school made individual advances which anticipated 
those down to the present day. The Florentine general effect 
of delicacy combined with power and conviction is largely 
reflected in Poussin, and through him it greatly influenced the 
whole course of French painting. The step taken by Masaccio 
towards naturalism was enormously influential in the process of 
bringing art from preoccupation with another world to interest 
in the world as it actually is; more particularly, his modification 
of line foreshadowed the Venetians, Rembrandt, Goya, Daumier, 
Renoir, Glackens and Pascin. He worked line, color and space 
into the perceptible atmosphere and realistic aerial perspective 
from which developed the luminous, colorful atmosphere of 
Claude, the Barbizon painters, and the impressionists. With 


DHE PR LOREN TINE ST RADITION L7H 


the same elements he created the haze and the chiaroscuro which 
‘in Rembrandt developed into the means of realizing a profound 
mysticism. 

Uccello’s development of abstract design finds a parallel in 
many modern and contemporary artists, including Cézanne, 
Matisse, Prendergast, and Picasso. His treatment of the back- 
ground as a contrasting screen rather than as realistic repre- 
sentation, which is also to be seen in Fra Filippo Lippi, antici- 
pates Manet, Pissarro, Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse. Piero 
della Francesca’s color and to a considerable extent his line, 
light and modelling, and general design, were used by Picasso 
and other moderns in the development of pure design and 
pervasive color effect. Andrea del Castagno’s swirl is an antici- 
pation of that of Tintoretto, Rubens and Delacroix; his draughts- 
manship forecasted that of Goya, Daumier, Renoir, Glackens 
and Pascin; and in his color, line and space, there are also sug- 
gestions of forms characteristic of Rembrandt and El Greco. 

The Greek influence noted in the painters of the High Renais- 
sance continues in Poussin and to a certain extent in Claude, and 
it is the chief stock in trade of the neo-classicism of the early 
Nineteenth Century. The fluid line of Ingres recalls the incisive- 
ness of Raphael’s line and the decorative quality of Botticelli’s, 
both of them clearly Greek in origin. 

The influence of Leonardo and Raphael upon subsequent 
painting is seen particularly in modelling and in composition. 
This influence on the whole has been deplorable, since aca- 
demicians and purveyors of literature and sentiment have at all 
times drawn sustenance from it. Michel Angelo seems to lie 
somewhat off the main track of painting although his especial 
interest in anatomical representations is seen in varying degrees 
in painting since his time. Cézanne owes as much to Michel 
Angelo as he does to El Greco or to the impressionists. 

All painting since the Renaissance has been so much influenced 
by the Florentine tradition, that it cannot be properly under- 
stood or judged by anyone unfamiliar with the work of that 
school. The converse of that statement is also true, namely, that 
the meaning of the Florentine tradition is only fully revealed by 
the development that has followed from it, and that Giotto, 
Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, and the artists of the High 
Renaissance are not fully comprehensible by those unable to 
understand and appreciate the most modern movements in 
painting. 


CHAPTER III 


THE VENETIAN TRADITION 


THE characteristic Venetian tradition appeared much later than 
the Florentine, and never really represented the austere Christi- 
anity of the Middle Ages. The influence of the Renaissance oper- 
atedstrongly, but the classic feeling is more thoroughly assimilated 
and incorporated into a new and characteristic form. In the 
best period there was naturally a successful union of traditions, 
subject-matter was brought closer to the earth, and hence there 
is a greater naturalness in the Venetian form at its best than 
ever appeared among the Florentines. 


The first of the Venetians to merit serious attention is 
Giovanni Bellini. From his teacher, Vivarini, he inherited the 
academic tradition of the Fourteenth Century but reworked 
it into a richer tradition which contains the germs of the work 
of the greatest Venetians, Giorgione, Titian and Tintoretto. The 
most important of Bellini’s contributions was in the realm of 
color. He for the first time used color structurally, that is, he 
made it seem to enter into the solid substance of objects. He 
also used it as a means to create a circumambient atmosphere 
of color, by which the effect of color in unifying composition was 
greatly increased in power. It seems probable that Bellini got 
the latter idea from Masaccio; but he converted it from an 
atmospheric haze into a pervasive swimming color which sur- 
rounds and sets off the particular objects and contributes a 
further element both of unity and variety to the picture. Both 
the structural use of color and the glow were less in evidence in 
Bellini than in his successors. The glow does not yet suffuse 
the whole picture, but is confined to certain areas, and is more 
silvery than golden, though the reddish-gold quality is beginning 
to appear. This limitation of the glow to certain areas, together 
with the partial use of structural color, is seen in his altar-piece 
in I Frari Church at Venice. 

Bellini’s use of light was epoch-making in two respects. First, 


Tory be VereN BE DANS TD RAD DT ON E73 


his modelling by light and shadow was taken over both by his 
great successors at Venice and by Leonardo, from whom it 
descended to Raphael. Bellini’s modelling is more convincing 
than that of these Florentines because he achieves solidity with- 
out the overaccentuation that became virtuosity in Leonardo. 
Bellini’s second great achievement by the use of light was the 
construction of a complicated but unified design which Giorgione, 
Titian, and Tintoretto used later with marvellous results. 
Bellini’s composition remains on the whole within the academic 
formula, though his compositional design is enriched by new 
combination of color (as in the ‘‘Madonna of the Alberetti’’) 
by graceful, fluid line, and by designs within designs to such an 
extent that the effect is decidedly novel. We realize the impor- 
tance of all of these achievements when we see how much of 
the plastic values of the later Venetians is due to the inspiration 
they found in Bellini. For example, the poetic treatment of 
landscape, and its combination with figures to the enhancement 
of both, which we find in Giorgione, are anticipated in the 
“Sacred Conversation.’ In the I Frari altar-piece, there is the 
germ of Tintoretto’s mingling of light and color in the rendering 
of texture. Bellini’s use of color to build up the structure of 
objects anticipates Titian, although Titian replaced his sharp- 
ness of line with a more convincing blurring of outlines. In his 
work there is the dignity, avoidance of sentimentalized expres- 
sion, and the uniform control of the plastic means which is 
characteristic of the Venetian School as a whole, and which 
contrasts with the opposite traits of Leonardo and Raphael. 
He was a very great painter, who is overshadowed by his suc- 
cessors only because they made even more impressive use of 
his means. 


In the work of Carpaccio we see Bellini’s feeling for design 
elaborated into more complicated compositions, and also the ten- 
dency of the glow of color to become more silvery and crystalline. 
His compositions depart from the conventional central mass 
and bilateral symmetry, and his three-dimensional objects take 
on a rhythmic order in deep space. We feel his compositions 
as a procession of rhythmic units. He is among the greatest 
masters of space-composition: his very expressive handling of 
spaces was perhaps his most distinctive contribution to the 
Venetian tradition. In all parts of his pictures, there are intri- 


4 


174 THE WERADAGIONS £0 Fight Neale Ne 


cate designs in the individual units which merge into the strong 
central design. In them we find light, color and space, balanced 
with three-dimensional figures showing a finer feeling for tactile 
values than any Florentine ever achieved. His rendering of 
stuffs, though Italian in feeling, tends towards the Flemish in 
treatment, and anticipates the extreme textural richness of the 
subsequent Venetian canvases. He enriched the tradition also 
by great skill in the employment of architectural detail to 
enhance his design, and by quite a sensitive rendering of the 
spirit of place. His ‘‘Dream of St. Ursula”’ brings home to us, 
by the similarity of general subject-matter to Vermeer’s, how 
far superior Carpaccio was to Vermeer both in grandeur of 
conception and in technical skill. 


Giorgione is the one man whose richness of plastic values 
makes him a serious rival of Giotto for the highest place in 
the hierarchy of art. Although he lacked Giotto’s originality 
in conceiving fundamental principles, Giorgione has an almost 
equally great claim to uniqueness: he merged all the good in 
the traditions of his time into a new and distinctive form, in 
which are visible more of the values of painting than in that of 
any other artist, not excepting Giotto, if one realizes the impor- 
tance of color. The foundation of his form is color; it is of the 
utmost richness in itself, and it functions in the design to the 
greatest extent of which color is capable of functioning. There 
is in it the rich but delicate quality which we term the Venetian 
glow, so subtly pervasive and unifying that, apart from any other 
plastic value, it is a supremely moving artistic achievement. In 
addition, the color is presented in an indefinitely varied series 
of designs, in themselves harmonious rhythms that move in and 
about all parts of the canvas, weaving themselves into a general 
design that has an emotional power equal to that of the richest 
symphony. One cannot imagine color doing more than it does 
in Giorgione: it supplies the maximum sensuous charm and 
decorative quality, blends with the light, welds together the 
composition, and contributes to the power and expressiveness of 
the drawing. He has an equally great control over the use of 
light. It affords a general illumination which we feel to be per- 
fectly natural, the antithesis of Leonardo’s and Raphael’s artifi- 
cial lighting. In its other uses, the light aids in modelling and 
in unifying composition, and forms minor patterns which enter 


DEE OV ENE DP AN) SDR AD ET ELON 175 


harmoniously into the total design. The line is always expres- 
sive, rhythmic, and fluid. It builds structure and decorates it, 
and is not isolated from either the structure or the decoration. 
The composition, at its best, is entirely liberated from academic 
shackles, is wonderfully varied, perfectly realized in three dimen- 
sions, with beautiful spacing; the massesare convincingly solid, and 
are knit together by sequence of line, light and color. All thisis 
accomplished without suggestion of overemphasis of any ele- 
ment: even the ubiquitous color is never out of place and never 
stands out by reason of excessive brilliance. This supreme merging 
of all effects endows every part of the canvas with intrinsic interest 
as well as with integral and aesthetically significant relations to 
every other part. In the “Concert Champétre,’’ there is not a 
spot that is uninteresting in itself or a mere transition to some 
other spot of greater interest: the eye cannot rest anywhere 
without finding the fullest satisfaction. 

These plastic qualities are the legitimate foundation for an 
expression that is probably the most poetic in all painting. The 
note is primarily lyric, idyllic, arcadian; it is free from weakness 
and softness, and becomes stronger the more it is considered. 
The elevation of Giotto, the power of Michel Angelo, the drama 
of Tintoretto, the mystery of Rembrandt, are all present in solu- 
tion. The intense but deep and restrained human feeling, the 
glamor and mystery of nature, the peace and the mysticism of 
all-embracing natural religion, produce a total effect which is, in 
the best sense, sublime. Giorgione’s unique endowment as an 
artist is shown in the Castelfranco Madonna, which was painted at 
an early age and under influences comparatively academic. Into 
that composition which, by itself, would be formal and stereo- 
typed, he injected a wealth of plastic and human values which 
make us forget the triteness of the compositional arrangement. 


The early work of Titian has most of Giorgione’s qualities, 
though in a weaker form. In ‘“‘Christ and Magdalen” and 
“Sacred and Profane Love,’ there are present the Venetian 
glow, the manner of using light, the richly diversified, individual 
composition, the lyric quality of Giorgione; but these charac- 
teristics are slighter, less convincing, less poetic. Subsequently, 
Titian’s work became less arcadian and more dramatic, until it 
covered nearly the whole range of expression. It gained in 
splendor and reality of color, elaborateness of design, gravity, 


¥, 


176 LHS SORA D UE ONS 2Oies PATI wee 


depth and majesty. It offers plastic embodiment to the most 
lofty themes without recourse to technical tricks of any kind, 
and although it never reaches quite the height of Giorgione’s at 
his best, it is infinitely more extensive in scope. The Giorgion- 
esque quality never éntirely disappears but gradually merges 
into a new form which makes Titian’s later work very different 
in feeling. His chief technical advance over Giorgione consisted 
in a still greater fluidity of drawing, in which the line gives place 
more and more to color which overflows rigid demarcations and 
replaces them by increasingly blurred contours. Drawing 
becomes a fusion of line, light and color, and is the means of 
some of his best effects, as in the ‘‘ Man with the Glove.’”’ Here 
the figure melts into the background, without any sharp con- 
trasts of line, of color, or of lighting, and yet it is perfectly dis- 
tinct. It stands away from what is back of it, but the means 
by which that separation is effected are subtle to the last degree. 
There is general economy of means, of the highest type: the 
design is extremely simple, and yet every element in it is utilized 
to the utmost. The background seems to recede to infinity, but 
by the use of what means it is impossible to say. There is very 
little actual color and yet the effect is extremely colorful. The 
dull tones seem to glow with harmonious color used structurally 
and blended with light to give an effect of solid reality in a 
degree surpassed by noone. This superlative economy of means 
is something not attempted by Giorgione, and shows both 
Titian’s mastery and his originality. 

The same dignity and effectiveness in embodying the values of 
what is presented appear also in the ‘‘The Supper at Emmaus”’ 
and the ‘‘Entombment.” The effect of solemnity, of quiet, deep 
drama, make these paintings among the greatest in existence. 
Similar rendering of religious feeling unobtrusively, convincingly, 
profoundly, is repeated on a larger scale in the ‘‘ Assumption,” 
in which the design is more complex than any attempted by 
Giorgione. It has greater wealth of secondary designs and a 
more symphonic or epic effect than is to be found anywhere else. 

The standards characteristic of Titian’s best work are not 
always maintained. In his ‘‘Christ Crowned with Thorns,” 
there is an overuse of light, comparable to that of Leonardo and 
Raphael, and the effect is chiefly melodramatic. In ‘‘St. John the 
Baptist,’’ a similar yielding to Leonardo’s preoccupation with 
light and line has a deleterious effect upon the reality of his 


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THE-VENETIAN TRADITION 181 


forms. But Titian at his best left a volume of work represent- 
ing a more important contribution to painting than any other 
painter except Giotto, and in his influence upon later artists he 
was again second only to Giotto. Titian’s forms are so impor- 
tant and so rich, and they are achieved by such a varied and 
skilled use of technical means, that no brief general. summary 
could do justice to either the forms or the technique. It is only 
by detailed study of particular paintings, such as has been 
attempted in our analysis (page 429) of his ‘‘Assumption,”’ that 
one can obtain an adequate idea of his extraordinary versatility 
and power. 


Tintoretto’s form is fundamentally that of movement and 
drama. The chief technical means is a modification of line 
tending toward distortion and its incorporation into a plastic unit 
which is a swirl of light, color and line. This appears both in 
the minor details of treatment, and in the composition as a whole; 
for example, in the ‘Portrait of the Artist,’’ this swirl is to be 
seen in the lines of the face, in the cheeks, and in the beard. In 
his ‘‘ Paradise,’’ the whole composition is a succession of these 
swirling units, communicating that quite particular quality to 
the canvas and making it so powerfully moving. Because of the 
dramatic character of this swirl, Tintoretto is less successful than 
Titian in treating peaceful or lyric themes, but much more suc- 
cessful in portraying dramatic action. When Titian attempts 
active dramatic movement, we find relatively unsuccessful 
paintings like ‘‘Bacchus and Ariadne” and “Christ Crowned 
with Thorns.”’ a 

Tintoretto’s color is rich and deep in itself, it functions in the 
design, and is very well used structurally. It gets an added 
power by its application in his characteristic swirl, in which 
movement and power are fused. In his rendering of tex- 
tiles we feel the same dramatic tendency, and this is achieved 
by illuminating the color to give irradiation of light and trans- 
lucency of quality. At other times, as in the background of 
‘‘Suzanne at the Bath,’ he makes the texture more clear-cut, 
metallic, lustrous, than it is with Titian. The translucent effect 
was further developed by El Greco, and the metallic by Paolo 
Veronese. The effect of his swirl is animation and vigor: his 
work is less tranquil than Titian’s and entirely free from the 
idyllic calm of Giorgione’s. 


182 EUR IRA Daa DONS SO Teer ASL eee 


Tintoretto’s composition shows the same tendency to move- 
ment. The more important masses are frequently placed at the 
extreme left or right of the canvas, as in ‘‘Suzanne at the Bath.”’ 
When there is a central mass, as in the ‘‘ Paradise,” it is less a 
means for setting the composition as a whole at rest than as a 
focus of motion. The movement is quite different from and 
more solidly real than that of Raphael, whose incisive line and 
sharp contours give a rather isolated movement. In Tintoretto, 
the whole structure of the object moves by a line composed of 
color, line and light fused into one. ‘Tintoretto showed his great- 
ness by the ability to realize movement in good plastic terms 
and so to control it that he could adapt it to a great variety of 
subjects, from dignified portraiture to the seething turmoil por- 
trayed in his “Crucifixion.’’ One of his most important con- 
tributions was in the use of light placed in contrast with broad 
areas of rich, deep color. By that method he achieved a par- 
ticular quality of vitality and richness in the painting of the 
long folds of gowns. An even more striking use of the same 
means is seen in painting of skies. There he used a broad area 
of dark color in alternation with ribbon-like streaks of light in 
varying degrees of width. Both the color and the light are 
applied in a swirling fashion, with an effect that is intensely 
dramatic. El Greco made this device the foundation of a tech- 
nique which has influenced many of the important subsequent 
painters. . 

Tintoretto’s work shows how a great man can enrich an 
already great tradition. To the Venetian tradition he added 
characteristic personal variations in design, light, color, line, 
composition, rhythmic form. He reorganized Titian’s contribu- 
tions to his own ends. The swirl, and a new integration of 
light and color, show his ability to make the necessary modifi- 
cation of familiar technical means to render new dramatic effects. 
Even the tinting of the traditional glow is changed appropriately. 
He is inferior to Titian and Giorgione only in that his means 
are more obvious and less simple, that his color is not quite so 
rich, and that the conviction of reality in his pictures is some- 
times not quite so strong. But he advances upon them in that 
he adds a new string to the Venetian bow. How important 
Tintoretto’s contribution was is realized when we recall that 
El Greco derived chiefly from Tintoretto and that much of what 
is best in modern painting comes from El Greco. 


eed Eee te IN Bede DAN CRIA DIET I-OoN 183 


Paolo Veronese is typically Venetian in the best sense. 
His virtues are in the main those of his predecessors, though 
not quite on the same supreme level. He is less lyric than 
Giorgione, less imaginative than Titian, less dramatic and 
powerful than Tintoretto. His special ability lay in portraying 
the spirit of festival and pageantry, and this he did successfully 
in enormous canvases of great decorative richness. 

His particular technical innovation was the modification of 
Tintoretto’s metallic lustre into something more crisp, cool, and 
clear-cut. It is this quality that makes his textures appear 
brilliant, enamelled and jewel-like, instead of soft and mysteri- 
ous, as in Titian and Giorgione. He has the command over 
space that recalls Carpaccio’s compositions, and great ability to 
render the spirit of place and the feeling of all the material 
objects in their own surroundings. He modified the Venetian 
glow to a yellowish or brownish color, with more coolness but 
with less of tranquillity, glamor and mystery. Color remains 
structural, though it is less glowing. Light is very well used 
in all its functions, to form design, accentuate movement, and 
render tactile values. In that-he usually works on a large scale 
with prodigality of means, he never reaches the concentrated 
effects of the canvases of Titian or Tintoretto, but at his best 
he is able to give plastic realization to his chosen subjects with 
very great artistry. 


SUMMARY OF THE VENETIAN FORM 


The chief characteristic of the Venetian form is the use of 
color, first, structurally, and then in combination with light, 
in the form of a pervasive, circumambient atmosphere or glow. 
The uniform richness of color as a sensuous element and its use 
to establish the relations constituting plastic form, was the 
supreme achievement of the Renaissance in painting. The use 
of color in drawing at its highest degree of general effectiveness 
is seen in Titian, and a similar use of it in drama is found in 
Tintoretto. Giorgione used color in heightening the imagina- 
tive value of the theme and in forming infinitely varied con- 
trasts and harmonies. The Venetians conceived and success- 
fully realized lighting, drawing, space, composition, movement, 
rhythm, all in terms of color; for that reason Venetian painting 
represents, as a whole, the pictorial high-water mark. 


184 RHE TRADITIONS? OF BeAr Nils 


Compared with the Florentines, there is first of all the greater 
naturalness and spontaneity of feeling, which is due to an interest 
much more directly turned to the actual world. The Venetian 
figures are more completely realized in terms of the fullest 
experience, and there is consequently more human feeling in 
them. These figures fit more naturally into the landscape, and 
the landscape itself is more complete, rich and convincing because 
it is much more nature as we know it. In other words, there is 
an absence of that austerity which we see in the Florentines. 

The decorative element, which in the Florentines was rela- 
tively lacking, is very much in evidence in the Venetians. Even 
in the best of the Florentine colorists, such as Piero della Fran- 
cesca and Michel Angelo, the effect of the color was largely 
formal rather than material, so that it does not so charm the 
eye as it does in a good Venetian picture. This sensuous rich- 
ness, apart from all strictly expressive use of color, line, etc., 
increases the feeling of reality and gives an added satisfaction 
to the aesthetic sensibilities. For example, the Venetian glow 
over and above its function in holding the design together and 
adding to the glamor or mystery or poetry of the subject, has a 
direct appeal to the senses. We may say, in short, that Floren- 
tine painting is chiefly if not entirely expressive, and that Vene- 
tian painting, while equally and in many ways more expressive, 
adds also the very great value of decoration. Finally, as we 
shall see later, Venetian painting had a much wider and more 
profound influence on the subsequent development of the art. 


OPAL Rae 


PAINTING SUBSEQUENT TO THE VENETIAN 


From Paolo Veronese Venetian painting degenerated through 
the stage of mere imitation as represented by Sebastian del Piombo 
and Palma Vecchio, into the crude overdramatizations of Tiepolo. 
A number of gifted painters like Guardi, Canaletto and Pietro 
Longhi came later and worked in the tradition, but they con- 
tributed nothing new. 

The development of the tradition of Venice lay henceforth 
outside Venice itself. In Spain, El Greco developed Tintoretto’s 
color and his distortions into a new and an even more expressive ~ 
form; Velasquez derived his color from the school as a whole. 
Poussin merged the Florentine and Venetian traditions into a 
new, delicate, French form, and through him the whole charac- 
teristic French style since then was largely developed. Claude 
transformed the glow into his overpowering atmospheric effects, 
and thereby brought the tradition into bearing upon all modern 
landscape painting. But the chief agent in carrying over the 
Venetian effects to modern painting was Rubens, from whom 
developed, through Van Dyck, the school of English portraiture. 
From Rubens came also Fragonard and Watteau and, later, 
Delacroix, the impressionists, and also Renoir, as well as con- 
temporary colorists such as Matisse and Soutine. 

In Italy, there was no subsequent painting of the first impor- 
tance. Correggio used the light of Raphael and Leonardo in 
connection with a richer color than theirs to achieve a form not 
wholly borrowed. The Carracci and other late Italian painters 
were purely eclectics, had nothing of their own to say, and became 
mere academicians. 


Poussin may be compared to Giorgione in that he took all 
that was good in the traditions of painting and fused them so 
masterfully with his own personality that there emerges a new 
creation, a definite form which is highly individual. He had 
great command over the plastic means and he used them to 


186 DAE TRAD ET TON SO be (PUA NGL Nes 


construct an infinite variety of distinctive forms of a graceful, 
delicate poetic charm. In him, we find the whole of the Italian 
Renaissance in solution, and so individualized that we feel his 
own personal quality dominating the Italian. There is a light- 
ness and grace in his drawing and color, an airiness in his spaces, 
a suavity in his designs of light and in his illumination generally, 
a novel rhythm in the distribution of masses in his compositions, 
which make a new form, fundamentally and characteristically 
French in spirit and equally Poussin’s own. 

His work represents the reaction of a highly sensitive and rarely 
gifted Frenchman to the qualities in Italian paintings that gave 
the Renaissance its greatness. Poussin is one of the few great 
colorists: he had a fine feeling for the sensuous nuances of 
different colors and a rare power to make color function in 
harmoniously composing his canvases. The spots of scattered 
color harmonize both with adjacent spots and with the colors in 
remoter parts of the canvas. This color functions as much as 
line, space, or mass in unifying different components of groups 
of figures, and in organizing the scattered or different groups 
into a unified whole: it flows from one group to another and 
between other groups of figures, objects, trees, houses. His color 
must be appraised as a thing in itself and not in the terms of the 
great Italians. He never achieves the solidity with color that 
makes Titian’s figures and objects so firmly real, nor do his 
canvases swim with the rich glow of the great Venetians. All 
such use of color would be foreign to the suave, graceful delicacy 
which is inherent in everything of Poussin’s and which consti- 
tutes his own form. His color is delicately structural in his 
figures, and there is a glamor of overtones which make a tender 
pervasive glow. His color undulates with the line and is inte- 
grated with line and light into drawing which is both highly 
expressive and of the choicest delicacy. 

His figures have such a precision, a grace, an ease of posture, 
and are so indefinitely varied an positions, height, spacing, 
etc., that they have an arresting charm. In “‘Les Aveugles de 
Jérico’’ the group of figures offers no end of rhythms up and 
down, in and around the central figures, the separate groups, the 
collected group. Few if any of the Renaissance masters exceed 
his capacity as shown here. He converted Raphael’s finely 
expressive line into something more substantially expressive by 
merging it with other plastic elements. 


Been liN GSU SROURNT ~FO VENETDDAN, 187 


The many porcelain or enamel-like surfaces in Poussin arise 
from a refining and delicatizing of the clear-cut, metallic color- 
quality found in Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese. His subsidiary 
designs of light or of the lines in garments, also suggest the 
Venetians, and occasionally his anatomical distortions follow 
the lines of Michel Angelo, but always with due modification in 
the interest of the distinctive Poussin form. 

He advanced upon his predecessors by recasting their tradi- 
tions into a new form, but his work represented no great step in 
the direction of modern painting. He was rather the last of the 
Renaissance than a constructive factor in post-Renaissance 
painting. The classic spirit in the Renaissance appealed to him 
strongly and we see it reflected with characteristically Poussin 
delicacy in his figures and in his compositional use of architec- 
tural features. In this respect he recalls the work of Mantegna, 
but the cold, rigid, stone-like quality of Mantegna’s figures has 
melted into delicate and fluid grace of form and posture. In 
spite of his great gifts of space-composition, and his utilization 
of it in his treatment of out-door scenes, his landscapes are 
conceived in the Renaissance tradition as settings for his themes 
rather than as things interesting in their own right. In the 
‘‘Funeral of Phocion,” the details of the landscape function as 
objects compositionally like figures. This general classic and 
Renaissance feeling makes Poussin seem less modern than his 
contemporaries, Rembrandt, Claude and Velasquez, or even 
Rubens. Poussin must be considered as a fine flower of the 
Renaissance, to the traditions of which he added a quality of 
choiceness made up of charm, suavity, and delicacy reinforced 
by strength. 


CHAPTER V 


THE FLEMISH+ TRADITION 


Tue Flemish tradition, prior to Rubens, has a distinctive 
color-scheme, founded on a greenish-brown which is different 
from that of any school of Italian painting. This is used in 
backgrounds, in figures and in stuffs. Tempered with light to 
make a rhythmic form, it gives an effect quite unlike that of 
the Italian grays, blues, pinks and golds; even the dark paint- 
ings of the Florentines are less vigorous in rhythmic quality. It 
has an intrinsic vigor and solidity, and the lighting prevents the 
tendency to heaviness from becoming objectionable. While the 
color is brilliant, it is arid compared with Italian color. The 
general effect is dignified, quiet, with an ambient atmosphere. 
The painting of stuffs and landscapes is done with fullness of 
perspective and of detail and with considerable skill, but in the 
best men of the school the detail is rarely so emphasized as to 
distract the attention. Accentuation is dissolved in the unified 
form of the whole painting. Compared with the Italians, the 
Flemings seem heavy, and this holds true even in the case of 
such Italians as Carpaccio, who also employed detailed textural 
representations, but who retained the unmistakable Italian 
delicacy. The Flemings, however, are not wholly at a disad- 
vantage by reason of the heaviness, which gives added solidity, 
weight, dignity. Sometimes, the tendency to miniature paint- 
ing, which appears well marked even in so great a painter as 
Van Eyck, becomes the characteristic form of virtuosity and 
academicism of the school. There is also a disposition to make 
use of religious subjects of a sentimental type. 


Rubens raised the Flemish tradition from its comparatively 
academic and sentimental level by engrafting upon it the con- 
tributions of the Italian Renaissance, especially of the Venetians. 
From the Flemings he took the tendency to realistic treatment 
of textures and of details in general, the hot, rather superficial 


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THE FLEMISH TRADITION 103 


and arid color, and the general quality of weight. All these 
were modified in his work by the Venetian influence. His color 
is fundamentally derived from the Venetians but is so trans- 
formed by his own gifts that a new and characteristic color- 
form is evolved. The color enters into and becomes a part of 
the structure of objects in much the same way as with Titian, 
though in the loosening of line by flow of color over contour he 
never equalled Titian. The pinkish or reddish suffusion of color 
in his pictures is Rubens’s quite personal version of the Venetian 
glow. His drawing and modelling were inspired by the Floren- 
tines but so modified by Rubens’s own color and technique that 
the influences are merged creatively. His line resembles some- 
what that of Raphael, but is so much more broken up into 
short curves that it becomes more varied in true expressiveness 
as well as in decorative quality, and has a quite particular qual- 
ity of animation. In many of his paintings the classic influence 
is clearly apparent, but that too is modified away from the static, 
formal, classic feeling of Raphael and Poussin. The muscular 
accentuations which Signorelli, Cosimo Tura and Michel Angelo 
used in modelling were taken over, modified and adapted by 
Rubens to give an effect rather soft in comparison with the 
majestic result which the same means afford in Michel Angelo. 

Rubens’s fusion of the various influences above noted yielded 
the most characteristic of his plastic means: a swirl of broken 
light, line and color, which is the peculiar instrument of his indi- 
vidual effects of animation, movement and drama. This swirl 
differs from that of Andrea del Castagno; it is brighter and 
stronger in color, but it is used with so much abandon that it 
is less moving aesthetically. It is more nearly allied to the 
swirl of Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese, but is less powerful than 
Tintoretto’s, and on a smaller scale than Veronese’s. In Rubens 
the swirl is found in all the units of the picture and gives that 
strikingly rhythmic character always present in his work, both 
as a whole and in its individual parts. It gives a feeling of 
indefinitely repeated movements to all parts of the canvas. 
Hence the general effect of drama not only in the action of the 
figures, but also as a contributory note in backgrounds and tex- 
tures which would otherwise be more static. The combined 
effect of vigorous movement, rich, juicy, harmonious, structur- 
ally used color, and hot light, makes a striking, sometimes an 


194 THE TRADITIONS OF PAINTING 


overwhelming effect. In his best work, there is that perfect 
equilibrium which results when all the elements alike contribute 
to the effect. This effect is original in both expression and 
decoration, and makes Rubens’s form one of the outstanding 
features of the great art of all times. In richness of surface 
charm, Rubens ranks with Giorgione among the Renaissance 
painters and with Renoir among the moderns. 

Rubens’s form has both advantages and disadvantages. 
Naturally, it is best in the depiction of scenes of violent action 
and turmoil. It tends inevitably to the overdramatic, grandiose 
and flamboyant, and also to softness and mere prettiness. Many 
of Rubens’s own pictures have all of these defects, and in his 
imitators they become the chief characteristics. The quality of 
softness and prettiness is paramount in Van Dyck, and through 
him degenerated into the stock trait of Reynolds, Gainsborough 
and the other English portrait-painters. It is sometimes also 
apparent even in good men, such as Fragonard and Watteau of 
the Eighteenth Century French School, and becomes greatly 
exaggerated in their imitators. In Jordaens the attenuation of 
Rubens’s plastic form becomes melodrama, while in Delacroix’s 
very uneven work is to be found both a successful use of Rubens’s 
form and its degeneration into obvious histrionics. Attributes 
intrinsic to the form made it tend toward the specious and aca- 
demic unless its use was controlled by a fine discriminating 
intelligence, restraint, and a sense of depth and dignity. Rubens 
cannot be ranked with the greatest painters, with Giotto, 
Giorgione, Titian and Rembrandt, because of lack of economy 
of means, simplicity and restraint, and also because of a certain 
softness of fibre. His spirit is grandiose rather than noble or 
elevated, noisy rather than perfectly convincing, and his means 
are obvious rather than subtle. His work rarely indicates that 
he had experienced the deepest human values, and compared to 
any of the supreme painters he is lacking in the sense of mysti- 

_ cism. Nevertheless, he was a very great artist and the con- 
‘tributions which he made to art were enormously influential upon 
later important men. Through him the Renaissance traditions 
descended to modern art and he also added to them powerful 
and original features of his own creation. His influence has 
been greater than that of Rembrandt and Velasquez, probably 
because their work, being more individual, subtle, and unap- 


Joie ere ENE DS eS RAD BY TON 195 


proachable, lent itself less to use by other men. Rubens, more 
than anyone else, determined the development of later Italian, 
Spanish and English painting. He was the chief inspiration of 
the Eighteenth Century French School represented by Fragon- 
ard and Watteau. Through Delacroix and Constable he played 
a large part in fixing the form of impressionism, and the debt 
owed him by Renoir and Cézanne is very obvious. From the ° 
historical point of view he is the most important individual in 
the history of painting after Giotto and Titian. 


GHA PTE RAVI 


FRENCH PAINTING BETWEEN POUSSIN AND 
DAVID 


THE Renaissance tradition which Poussin made delicate and 
French, degenerated rapidly through Le Sueur into the academic 
formula which we find represented in the meretricious paintings 
that spoil the French rooms in the Louvre. There remains the 
French feeling of lightness, but through attenuation of plastic 
means to the vanishing point it is sunk to a spongy, weak delicacy. 

What Poussin did to the Renaissance tradition, the important 
French painters of the Eighteenth Century did to the Rubens 
tradition. The animation, vigor, joie de vivre, with the great 
richness of surface, characteristic of Rubens, became in their 
hands lighter, more elegant, more delicate. In becoming French, 
however, the tradition was also attenuated. The swirl remained, 
but its vigor was largely lost, and it served for ornamental pur- 
poses more than for expression. This is less true of Fragonard 
or Watteau than of Boucher and the lesser members of the school. 


Watteau was influenced by Claude and he shows some of 
Claude’s dignity, grandeur, and mystery, but compared with 
Rubens and Claude he is softer, less robust, more feminine. 
His blurred, diffuse outlines, together with the general femin- 
ization of the traditions which he took over, resulted in his 
characteristic idyllic, romantic form. 


Compared to Watteau, Boucher represents a general weaken- 
ing of plastic form with a tendency toward superficial prettiness 
and overemphasis of decoration. This, and the triviality of 
his subjects, give some of his pictures the uninteresting and 
unreal effects of valentines. Hewasan extremely skillful painter, 
with a command of sharp, expressive line which endows much 
of his work with a charming cameo-like quality; but the means 
by which action is represented are specious, and the action 
itself slight. What makes him of importance is that his various 


BED Wei N «POU S SEN WAN DD AW PD 197 


technical means are intelligently codrdinated, so that his pictures 
unify. But he never really stands on his own legs, and his 
quite obvious use of other men’s traditions challenges compari- 
sons which reveal his inadequacy. He achieves a form of hisown 
in that he found those traditions congenial to him, and made an 
individual use of them. His surfaces usually have the charm of 
delicate porcelain or enamel. 


With Coypel, the Venetian influence becomes more strongly 
marked, and in Lancret there is some of the quality of the 
Dutch genre painters. In the most important man of the school, 
Fragonard, we see all these traditions as they were modified by 
Rubens into anew form. Fragonard had the most vigorous and 
original sense of design to be found in any of the group but it is 
still, in its essentials, the Rubens form delicatized. This appears 
especially in his color, which is of lighter quality, has an attenu- 
ated structural function, is less intense, less juicy, drier. His 
composition is good because it is fluid, rhythmic, graceful, lead- 
ing the eye from one element to another, with no suggestion of 
formal, academic balance. His form is that of lightness, quaint- 
ness, femininity, idyllic delicacy, romantic charm, achieved by 
a technique which is chiefly a refinement of the Rubens swirl. 
He is differentiated from Boucher by the lack of the latter’s 
cameo-like quality, which makes his composition less clear-cut. 
As contrasted with Watteau, he is less diffuse, less romantic, 
less idyllic and he tends towards a Bacchanalian quality what- 
ever the subject of his pictures. In everything of Fragonard’s 
there is a sprightliness which is his own, and a much greater 
sense for the third dimension and for solidity than are to be 
found in any other member of the school. In modelling he 
sometimes attains a more effective three-dimensional solidity 
than Rubens, and by a method which is more linear and without 
the Rubens adaptation of muscular accentuations fused with 
structural color. This modelling, while less solid than that of 
Rubens, is more graceful, and therefore better suited to Fragon- 
ard’s general design of sprightliness and delicacy. Fragonard is 
the most important man of his school because he used all the 
plastic means with individual distinction and was able to fuse 
them into a form which is none the less strong because of its 
delicacy. 

Next to Fragonard in importance in this group is Lancret, 
who shared the feeling of lightness and delicacy but who gave 


198 THE SDR AID ITLON S 30 fehl 


it quite a particular plastic force by rigid figures establishing a 
series of forms that make up an appealing plastic design. 


One of the most important French painters of the Eighteenth 
Century, Chardin, stands quite outside of the Rubens tradition. 
What Poussin and Watteau did for the Italian and Flemish 
traditions, Chardin did for the early Dutch genre-painting— 
that is, he gave it a French quality and thereby created a new 
form. But in his case, the transformation meant a strengthen- 
ing as well as a delicatizing. He took away from the Dutch 
tradition its tendency to literal representation and put into it 
a much more original and appealing design and a better utiliza- 
tion of space, color, composition, and drawing. His pictures 
are full of unexpected notes that add greatly to the compositional 
variety. His atmosphere is clear and bright, his color is used 
structurally with conviction, and is more varied, harmonious 
and choice in quality than is found in his Dutch predecessors. 
His modelling gives the effect of solid reality entirely free from 
ponderosity. The light in his pictures is never dramatic, but it 
makes a very effective and subtle design which enters into and 
reinforces the design made by the distribution of masses, varia- 
tion in the sizes of objects, and masterly handling of spaces. 
The tones are richer, choicer and better than in Chardin’s pro- 
totypes in Holland, and the color is less peppered with light. 

In all respects, Chardin successfully avoids overaccentuation 
and virtuosity, with the result that his pictures have a high degree 
of reality. Everything is done simply and subtly and the degree 
of attention given to each object is exactly proportioned to its 
importance in the canvas, so that it strikes the eye with an 
effect that exactly corresponds to its place in the design. The 
general effect is of dignity, masterly use of technical means, 
absence of tawdry or melodramatic effects, reality. With the 
exception of Claude’s, his is probably the greatest contribution 

“made by France to art up to his time. The surfaces of the 
“" objects in Chardin’s painting are always French, always his own, 
never cheap, never tricky, just masterly. He is distinctively 
French of the Eighteenth Century, in the definite form of the 
time, which he simplified and made more solid, but never 
detached from the basic charm of the period. He puts poetry 
into the smallest and most trivial object. The combination of a 
real but homely poetry, a delicacy which is never weakness, and 
a full use of all the means of his craft, represent Chardin’s form. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE SPANISH RENAISSANCE 


El Greco was a pupil of Tintoretto. We have seen that 
Tintoretto’s particular form is a fusion of line, light and color in 
a swirl which produces very dramatic effects. The line is undu- 
latory, so that it tends toward distortions of the shapes of objects; 
the light is used in ribbon-like streaks in gowns, sky, etc.; the 
color is deeply structural, organizes the compositional units, and 
has a pleasing sensuous quality. These particular plastic ele- 
ments were taken over by El Greco and made the foundation of 
a new and distinctive form that shows a powerful use of the 
imagination in obtaining richer decorative designs of greater 
variety. In his early work these elements were used in almost 
their original forms, so that at that period his paintings seem to 
be almost literal reproductions of Tintoretto’s except in subject- 
matter. But very soon El Greco’s line gets finer and more 
animated, the metallic and translucent qualities in the color of 
Tintoretto become more vivid and lustrous, and the ribbon-like 
bands of light become broader and enter into more dramatic 
contrasts with adjacent color. As his particular form develops, 
we see these lines, color and light worked into the most amazingly 
intricate designsin all parts of the canvas, and these subsidiary 
designs enter into an extremely complex design, a rhythmic surge 
of tremendous aesthetic power. 

El Greco’s great command over line, light, color, space and 
design released him more completely from the limitations of 
realistic subject-matter, and enabled him to build a series of 
unique abstract forms of such power to compel attention that 
the spectator has little concern with the subject-matter. All the 
plastic elements are distorted deliberately in the interests of 
design: line becomes nervous, serpentine and writhing; color, 
iridescent, phosphorescent and vaporous; light, flickering, eerie 
and ghastly. But these qualities of line, color and light over- 
flow one into the other and make El Greco’s distinctive form 


200 THE SUR ADIT ONS a0 tea gy aes 


of writhing movement, flame-like in its pervasive power and 
intensity. 

An examination of his work compels admiration for the imag- 
inative scope that conceived plastic forms of such variety that 
they embody human values in subject-matter of the greatest 
diversity. At times, the plastic elements appear to be reeling 
in disequilibrium as we note that excitement and anxiety are 
the dominating emotions of the scene. At other times, the 
plastic elements are in themselves perfectly balanced around the 
subject-matter, portraying deep peace. The greatest range of 
human emotions get adequate plastic embodiment through mar- 
vellous combinations of a really very limited number of plastic 
means. The line is so fine, so animated, so nervous and so 
often repeated ina particular unit, that it seems to form almost 
atangle. Thesimple and stark colors—red, green, yellow, blue— 
take on a series of relationships through their variations by light 
and become a shimmering mass of variegated tones that insinu- 
ate themselves into the serpentine line to form designs that cover 
the whole gamut of color-contrasts and color-harmonies. We see 
a green flow into and tinge a red, blue or yellow of an adjacent 
object and give it a lurid, vaporous, unearthly effect. In another 
part of the canvas, a crimson-red transforms itself through 
gradations and admixtures of light to become, further on, some- 
times a lavender, sometimes a flame tinged with an ultramarine 
high-light. An indigo-blue is bathed with light and emerges a 
steely gray, a deep ochre is varied to a lemon-yellow. Shadows 
take on these many variations of red, yellow, green or blue and 
become a part of the serpentine unit of merged line, light and 
color. Everything is distorted into a design, even the shadows, 
and particularly the contrasts of bright colors against a compara- 
tively dark background are vivified and dramatized by broad 
streaks of light. We see a design in every plastic unit, every part 
of the canvas and in the canvas asa whole. Each unit shimmers, 
glows and flows into a pattern with other units—it is movement 
itself, but with an eerie, ghastly quality that makes the drama 
other-worldly. No other painter has ever achieved the deep, 
supernatural mysticism of El Greco’s religious subjects. The 
same effect is felt to some degree even in his realistic portraits. 
In our materialistic age his subjects have comparatively little 
appeal; but his design, his plastic forms, are as moving today to 
the sensitive spectator as his subject-matter was to the Christian 


fie SPAN nO ORE NAS SAN,.CE 201 


mystic of the Seventeenth Century. His distorted figures—with 
the narrow oval faces, crooked noses, squinting eyes, strange 
brows, ears of extraordinary angles, elongated fingers, twisted 
arms, swollen legs—these are things in themselves and are 
their own aesthetic justification. To seek in them representa- 
tive naturalistic values is to overlook both their intention and 
the total significance of art. The distortions are necessary to 
the design and prove that out of the elements of objects an 
artist can produce something that moves us more than anything 
we find in nature. 

It is only since about 1880 that El Greco has emerged from 
his obscure position to recognition as one of the greatest artists. 
The reason is that before that date critics shared the popular 
confusion of the values of representation with the values of art. 
With the advent of the great men of 1870—Courbet, Manet, 
Degas, Renoir, Cézanne—critical observers began to see that 
plastic form is something in itself of infinitely more aesthetic value 
than anything represented in subject-matter. An intelligent 
study of modern and contemporary painting will reveal that its 
values depend to a large extent upon plastic content that has 
much in kin with the qualities that make El Greco’s work art 
of the first grade. 


Velasquez is in a class by himself in at least two respects: 
first, in his command over the medium of paint, and second, in 
his ability to achieve realism of a vivid and particular character. 
He is the equal of any other painter in versatility and in ability 
to use each one of the plastic means to achieve powerful results. 
His work is so individual and his means so subtle that it is not 
easy to classify him in the great traditions of painting. The 
influences of his predecessors are present, but they are in solu- 
tion and converted into distinct entities that bear few surface 
indications of their origins. The chief influence was that of the 
Venetians: Titian’s color and Carpaccio’s sense of design and 
feeling for interiors took on new meanings in Velasquez’s work. 
From the Flemish he took the green and brown color-scheme, 
enriched it and applied it to new ends. From the Dutch he 
took the feeling of stuffs, made their browns and blacks more 
lustrous, and modified their technique of portraiture to attain 
new realistic effects. 

His colors are as rich as the Venetians’ and produce results 


202 THE. SARA DAIS DOWNS 9 Ol bye ANGE Nie 


quite their own by the way they balance and enter into relations 
with each other and with the other plastic elements. His color 
is cooler, and more quietly rich and lustrous; it glows, shimmers 
and dances in a design the basis of which is contrast with other 
colors. Even his shadows are rendered in animated colors and 
become integral parts of quiet, rich designs. This iridescence, 
juicyness, shimmer of objects, shadows, space, and effect of 
contrast, constitute an important new color-form individual to 
Velasquez. It is conjoined with a light which has its own quali- 
ties of clearness and sharpness, and also its own functions as 
illumination and as pattern. At times, light and color make an 
atmosphere that bathes the whole painting with its rich, fluid 
charm. His line is firm, flows gently into forms of sharper 
contour than we see in Titian and builds linear designs equal 
to those of Carpaccio. It gives an effect of poised movement 
equalled by few other painters. His modelling is rarely in evi- 
dence as such, but it is there in varying degrees of three-dimen- 
sional solidity that harmonize with the general plan of the canvas 
as a whole. No other painter put into space-composition more 
values or adapted it more skillfully to a great variety of purposes. 
With all this great command of plastic means goes a quality of 
impersonality, a detachment, a freedom from expressed emotion, 
that makes Velasquez the supreme realist. 

In him, realism takes the form of seeing the thing with an 
eye to its essential character; consequently, there is great sim- 
plification, elimination of everything not intrinsic to the thing 
presented. He differs from Rembrandt in being less imagina- 
tive, more concerned with what can be actually seen with the 
eye and less with the life in the object that can be divined by 
sympathetic insight. Thisisa part of his supreme impersonality, | 
his entire elimination of himself in favor of the world of external 
objects. He shows us what he sees with his sensibilities and 
intellect. After he has shown it, we never doubt that it is real 
nor that it contains the essential qualities that make the particu- 
lar object what it is. 

This impersonality of spirit is matched by his complete con- 
cealment of his technical means. It is by this mastery of the 
use of paint that all the plastic means are so completely merged 
that to detect the operation of any of them is impossible. 
This fusion of the means, more complete than in any other 
painter, shows Velasquez’s originality. In Titian, color stands 


Pr rees PAN bo REIN A LSS AN CLE 203 


out, and even when it is most successfully integrated, we have 
more the sense that color is the stuff out of which the picture is 
made. In Velasquez, nothing stands out; color, light, tactual 
quality, the space, both two-dimensional and three-dimensional, 
composition and rhythm of line and mass are there, but no one 
of them is what the picture is made of: it is made of them all, 
in measure and proportion. Design is absolutely dominant, it 
assigns to each element the role to be played, and that role is 
played, but not overplayed. 

Modern critics obsessed by the Renaissance and by the work 
of Cézanne have maintained that the painting of Velasquez is 
flat, that it lacks space-composition and modelling, that his 
color is superficial. Such critics have in mind the sculptural 
form of Michel Angelo, the elaborate modelling of Leonardo, 
the rhythms in deep space of Tintoretto, or the degree of struc- 
tural solidity in color of Titian. But the point overlooked by 
such critics is that in Velasquez’s design, all these would be over- 
accentuations. In the infinity of his backgrounds there is space- 
composition at its best; in his ability to make color, qualified 
with light, reveal the feeling, the essential textural quality of 
objects, there are both structural color and tactile values. The 
critics who reproach him for the fact that he does not so use 
these means as to make them stand out obviously, show that 
they have not grasped the meaning of plastic form, because his 
avoidance of all accentuations is really the secret of his art. 
His design is subtle but convincing and is richly varied by sub- 
sidiary designs that show the balanced use of all plastic means 
and are perfectly unified in the general design. The result isa 
plastic form that is absolutely real and entirely independent of 
every extraneous support. It is delicacy, charm, power, dignity, 
reality, mystery, peace. 

Many great painters have found in Velasquez’s work the 
source of developments that have been epoch-making. In nearly 
all of Chardin’s work is the Velasquez feeling for essential reality 
of material objects. Corot’s figures came from what he saw in 
Velasquez, and in both figures and landscape Courbet derived 
more from him than from any other source. Manet learned 
from Velasquez the value of simplification, the manner of using 
brush-strokes and the ability to put reality in objects by means 
of the quality of his actual painting. In both Courbet and 
Manet we see the selective and generalizing power that enabled 


204 DHE, ORAD BID O NSS) OF ee eae es sees 


Velasquez to detach the essential elements of objects and present 
them in their picturesque significance stripped of redundancy. 
Courbet’s color scheme of cool grays, greens, and blues, and his 
feeling of outdoors in landscape, came directly from Velasquez. It 
is probable that much of Cézanne’s search for essentials in objects 
in the world came from an unconscious absorption of Velasquez’s 
obvious power to select and generalize by ignoring the adven- 
titious. Impressionism owes much to Velasquez through the 
adaptations of Manet’s technique, of Courbet’s color and 
manner, of Claude Monet’s use of colored shadows. Renoir 
shared Velasquez’s interest in the visible qualities of the world 
of every-day people and events and took the same delight in 
interpreting them in line, color and space. Renoir, too, was 
detached but it was the detachment of one who sees the reality 
of the world bathed in charm and poetry. In the work of 
Velasquez and Renoir we never see depicted the emotions of 
fear, anger, hatred or pity that we find in the work of even the 
greatest painters, Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Tintoretto, El 
Greco. Both Renoir and Velasquez render the values of the 
every-day world, in its richness, its reality and its sensuous 
charm. It is a vision that is never literal but transformed 
through the artist’s deeper insight and incorporated in a great 
variety of plastic forms, which are satisfying in themselves and 
merge perfectly with the human values intrinsic to the subject- 
matter of the world we know by having lived in it. Theirs is 
a detached realism that moves us aesthetically more than 
expressed emotion ever does. They make us see and feel with 
our mind, in a situation in the real world, what we could not see 
except through the artists’ deeper vision and greater sensibilities. 


CHAPTER VIDE 


REMBRANDT AND HIS SUCCESSORS 


Rembrandt ranks with the greatest of artists in originality, 
in plastic power, and in the universality of the emotions his work 
elicits. His form is characteristic, has never been successfully 
imitated and is achieved by fewer plastic means than that of 
any other great artist. His means are chiefly light and shadow, 
used in the combination known as chiaroscuro, by which he is 
able to depict a whole gamut of powerful emotions deeply 
tinged with mysticism. His line and color are limited in variety 
but through their merging with chiaroscuro they give the effects 
of strong linear designs and a richness and depth of color infi- 
nitely more varied and moving than those which many artists 
of high rank obtain from intricate line and brilliant color. 

Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro is forecasted in some of the work of 
Masaccio and Andrea del Castagno, in whom, however, it isa mere 
incident. In Caravaggio it was used more nearly as a technical 
instrument. With Rembrandt it becomes a method and a 
technique and is used with such consummate skill that it has 
not the quality of a technical stunt or trick. On the contrary, 
it impresses us as the only natural and inevitable means of 
showing what he had to show, and we feel that his means do not 
hamper him in putting down what he saw and felt. Color in 
particular assumes quite a new quality and greatly increased 
power through the agency of his chiaroscuro. His repertoire 
of actual colors was very limited, usually sombre and rarely 
bright, but through the medium of chiaroscuro they take on a 
great variety of color forms that have tremendous power to 
reveal the emotional meaning of things as he felt them. Dark 
colors, usually brown, go from darkness through varying degrees 
to light, rich, glowing gold and back again to darkness in a 
pleasing, graceful flow reinforced by lines, spots of light and 
masses, all merging into a moving, harmonious design. 

With line and space his chiaroscuro also works miracles. Line 
as we see it stand out in Botticelli, Leonardo or Raphael does not 
exist in Rembrandt; but it is related to the use of chiaroscuro to 
achieve a distinctness of contour by means so subtle that it is 
impossible to say how the work is done. A dark figure against 


206 DH Beet RAD DOWN'S Oho OPAC TN Aes 


a background hardly less dark, makes a mass which stands out 
with fine three-dimensional solidity against a background that 
recedes into infinity. With means of equal subtlety, he renders 
the different feelings of hair, flesh, fur, etc.; when these are 
juxtaposed the edge of demarcation is perfectly clear, though 
there is no line to speak of, and the difference in the tones 
employed almost escapes detection. The intervals between 
masses are so clean-cut and distinct that each figure moves in 
its own world: of space, but one that relates itsélf with other 
spaces and forms designs of simplicity and great charm. 

No other painter has so combined economy of means with 
richness and convincingness of effect. Velasquez’s means are 
perhaps equally or even more subtle, but they are more varied. 
Rembrandt not only realizes convincingly, but achieves a won- 
derfully effective design by the rhythmic ordering of lines, masses, 
spaces, and the harmonies of color blended with light and shadow. 
He has not the obvious surface decorative quality of Veronese 
or Rubens, but his expressive forms are so interrelated that 
decoration is fused with expression into a beautiful unity. 

Rembrandt’s technique seems the only possible means to make 
the physical appearance of things an illumination of their intrin- 
sic quality, their significance from within. He seems to feel 
the life by which anything is animated and to make it visible. 
There is somewhat the same quality in Giorgione, but it con- 
cerns an elysian life and is therefore more remote. Both are 
poetic, but Rembrandt’s is the less obvious poetry, the mystic 
poetry of the things nearest us, which ordinarily escape us. It 
represents the consummation of what Bosanquet calls ‘“‘the 
home-coming of art,’ the discovery of profound meaning in the 
here and now. Rembrandt is a realist, but it is the real as 
interpreted and not merely as observed, such as Velasquez 
portrays. In Rembrandt’s portrait of ‘‘Hendrickje Stoffels,’’ the 
rendering of the quality of things is anything but literal, but it 
gives us the essence of the things as felt. In this sense, Rem- 
brandt is the most mystical and religious of painters, with 
everything adventitious, remote, or perfunctory left out, the 
mystical essence of religion extracted and made one with the 
essence of human values. Thus, imaginative interpretation of 
the real world reaches its greatest height, with perfect plastic 
realization, and with complete avoidance of anything not cap- 
able of being rendered in plastic terms. 

Rembrandt’s weakness consisted in his inability to realize 


Poi rh IN Elan Dy Fi oe BS: SO ROS 207 


his plastic form in the majority of his paintings. In the ‘‘Un- 
merciful Servant,’’ and in the portraits of ‘‘Hendrickje Stoffels,”’ 
and of “An Old Man,” in the Uffizi, we see him technically at 
his best. In the portrait of the ‘Old Woman Cutting her Nails”’ 
there is the overaccentuation of his chiaroscuro that produces 
the specious and tawdry results that are nearly always found in 
the work of his imitators. His influence upon subsequent paint- 
ing has been great but only a few painters have been able to 
utilize his contributions to new and personal ends. The most 
successful in this respect was Daumier, although other men, like 
Hobbema, Bonington and Monticelli, have used a modification 
of his principles with some degree of success. It became a stock 
trick with the Dutch genre-painters and sank to the status oe ZA 
a threadbare banality. 

Dutch painting after Rembrandt is chiefly concerned Ae 
landscape and genre. Rembrandt had comparatively little influ- 
ence on the painting of landscape, but his chiaroscuro lent itself 
well to the treatment of interiors and of the life lived in them, 
and the spirit of his work was not unlike that of simple scenes 
and every-day affairs. Hence, genre-painting was influenced by 
him, though none of the genre-painters could possibly be called 
his successor, for none had his poetry, his magic. The general 
effect of genre-painting is intimacy, an obviously though not 
profoundly appealing human quality; this, combined with very 
great technical skill, with especial application to the treatment 
of textures, fabrics, and still-life, constitutes the characteristic 
Dutch form. In the best of this group, Vermeer and Peter de 
Hooch, the skill is more than virtuosity because of perfect 
adaptation of means to ends. Except in Rembrandt, however, 
the Dutch always fell short of the highest rank: their form 
suffers from the relatively trivial nature of its preoccupations. 
This is seen even in Dutch landscape, which is zmtime, and has 
a genre-feeling compared with that of Claude. Hobbema, how- 
ever, has a true plastic power which makes his work distinctive 
even though Dutch in general characteristics. 

The Dutch painting of genre was the chief influence upon 
Chardin, and through him it affected Cézanne. Of the purely 
genre-painters, Brouwer was one of the most powerful; the level 
is sometimes high in Dou, Terborg and Metsu; it slips through 
Steen and Van Ostade to the poor academicism of that time, 
which persists in most of the popular painting of today. It 
becomes narrative or mere virtuosity without plastic unity. 


CEA Pa Rees 


PORTRAITURE 


IN portrait painting, an artist is much more rigidly limited 
than in such subjects as landscape or dramatic figure-painting 
and he is compelled to get his effects with a minimum of means; 
consequently, his ability to use these means is severely tested. 
His problems are: to make the figure seem to live, to distinguish 
it clearly from its background, and to make the figure and 
background unify into a design which is itself aesthetically 
moving apart from literal likeness to the sitter. 

We see supreme triumphs of portraiture in Titian’s “‘Man with 
the Glove,’’ Rembrandt’s ‘‘ Hendrickje Stoffels”’ and Velasquez’s 
‘““Infanta Marguerita’’ and in numerous Tintorettos in the Pitti. 
All these show extraordinary economy and subtlety of means, so 
that we find spaciousness in the design as a whole, reality in the 
figure, and a clear differentiation between figure and back- 
ground, by means so simple and subtle that they almost escape 
detection. In each case, the effect is of convincing reality 
achieved by a design of great aesthetic power. These painters 
were the great masters of portraiture; hence the qualities in — 
their work may be taken as standards with which to compare 
the portraits of other men who though good were less good. 

Antonello da Messina’s ‘‘Condottiere,’’ in the Louvre, is an 
early example of portraiture at a high level in which the effect 
is one of realism and power rather than of charm. The means 
employed are primarily a contrast of light and shadow, with 
the light used in an obvious way; it does not overshadow 
but brings out the other plastic elements. The background 
is simply a dark mass, but by slight shadings in tone it is 
given separate existence, so that the head is clearly defined 
against it as an independent, solid, real object. In the neigh- 
boring ‘“‘Portrait of Man’’ by Giovanni Bellini, there is greater 
variety of means, but they are used less subtly, so that there is 
a suggestion of melodrama both in the light and in the color; 
still, the picture unifies and is of high quality. In Franciabigio’s 





Velasquez 


Louvre 


Analysis, page 447 


( 209 ) 





Rembrandt Louvre 


Analysis, page 451 


( 210) 





Goya Barnes Foundation 


Analysis, page 456 


E2ri) 





Velasquez Wallace Collection 


Analysis, page 449 


(222s) 


POR ReA ier URE Zre 


“Portrait of a Young Man,” also hanging in the immediate 
neighborhood, the figure is flat and lacks reality and the whole 
painting is thin, soft and lacks conviction. In still another paint- 
ing hanging near by, Raphael’s ‘‘ Portrait of a Young Man,”’ the 
figure is made to stand out by the more facile means of strik- 
ing contrasts in color, bright light, and realistic detail. Conse- 
quently, the effect seems cheap, in that the skillful utilization of 
traditional technique replaces imaginative power. We realize 
that Raphael, deprived of the use of his gifts for elaborate com- 
position, especially space-composition, and for dramatic move- 
ment, lacks originality and is compelled to resort to what is 
essentially virtuosity. 

With Tintoretto, the element of distortion enters portraiture. 
In his picture of himself, in the Louvre, linear distortion makes 
the face more striking, dramatic, and interesting in design, 
without loss of essential realism. It constitutes a departure 
toward the imaginative realism in which his characteristic 
swirl played so important a role. The swirl gives animation 
and power to the features and to the general expression; it 
also permits a duplication, reinforcement, and harmony of 
rhythms in the various parts of the figure and background 
which adds interest to the design. As a portrait, Tintoretto’s 
picture of himself is even better than the “‘Man with the Glove,”’ 
but because of the greater complexity and contrast of elements 
it is inferior as a work of art to the Titian, in which the means 
are simpler, more merged and more restrained. 

Compared with the greatest portraitists, Rubens seems inferior 
though his rank as a great artist in this respect is incontestable. 
His color, more brilliant than that of Titian or Rembrandt, is 
put to facile and obvious use in differentiating figure and 
background. While this method adds decorative quality, the 
differentiation and decoration seem cheaper than when they are 
accomplished by subtler means. Furthermore, while his greater 
wealth of detail and the skilled adaptation of swirling line and 
color lend additional interest to the design, these obvious tech- 
nical procedures seem to be superfluous baggage that detracts 
from the simple dignity of the effect. His omnipresent dramatic 
sense appears in his treatment of the figures, and in the merging 
of light, line, color and shadow to realize the distinctive Rubens 
form in his moving, dynamic backgrounds. In his “‘ Portrait of 
Henri de Vicq,”’ the background seems not a stuff but a lumi- 


15 


214 THEW RA DPGROWN SiO Baste AION sletenes 


nous atmosphere and the picture suffers relatively to Titian’s 
‘‘Man with the Glove’”’ because the black mass of the gown in the 
Rubens functions only as a mass in relation to the red back- 
ground, whereas in the Titian it functions both as a mass and as 
an active element in design. In the Rubens, light or any other 
means of adding variety would have supplied the functional 
value that is missing. 

In portraiture, as in other subjects, no painters’ achievements 
are uniformly equal. In Titian’s ‘Alphonse de Ferrare and 
Laura di Diante,’’ the drawing and light are overexpressive in 
the Raphaelesque manner, so that in spite of the Venetian color 
there is a cloying sweetness. In Rembrandt’s “Portrait of the 
Artist’’ (the Louvre version), the light is not used with uniform 
success and it obscures rather than illuminates the hand of the 
figure. In his picture of ‘“The Man with the Stick,” the very 
sharp contrast between the dark side and the light side of the 
face produces an impression of obvious and technically achieved 
melodrama which makes a form lacking in plastic unity. 

An instance of portrait-painting which rarely reaches the heights 
of great art is that of Franz Hals. Only a very few painters had 
Hals’s extraordinary ability in the use of paint, or his eye for 
the picturesque and striking. His figures are well placed against 
the background, and they have an attractive sense of animation, 
in posture and expression; but they are theatrical instead of 
solidly human in their qualities. His defective grasp of deeply 
moving human values is only emphasized by his superb technical 
skill. The superbly executed stuffs, for example, in the ‘‘ Laugh- 
ing Cavalier,’’ have a positive intrinsic value and contribute to the 
general design; but we see how extraneous to art is such painting 
when we compare it with Rembrandt’s or Velasquez’s less 
showy but more convincing texture-painting. The heraldic 
device in ‘‘ Nicolas Van Beresteyn,’’ which is used to invigorate a 
background lacking in intrinsic interest, is another instance of 
Hals’s cheap strain. His color is dry, either drab or overbright, and 
has only a superficial quality. He was undoubtedly one of the 
very greatest masters in the use of paint, and he had a good 
sense for design, but he lacks the great conceptions and bal- 
anced use of means of the really important men. His art is 
constantly eked out by virtuosity, and the result is that he 
seems relatively unreal and tawdry. 

After Rubens, portrait-painting tended toward mere sur- 


PAR Te RIA eT ULE, 215 


face prettiness. It is present very strikingly in Van Dyck, 
who is an elegant feminine edition of Rubens, with essentially 
nothing of his own to show, in spite of his great skill with the 
brush. He exaggerated the Rubens decorative quality and 
transmitted it to the English portrait-painters, Reynolds, 
Gainsborough, Lawrence, and the lesser men of the school, 
where it becomes prettiness and virtuosity of the cheapest 
kind, without any admixture of art. The single exception is 
Bonington, as may be seen in ‘‘The Housekeeper,” in which a 
very successful use of thick impasto, with slight reminiscences 
of Hals in the brush-work, is used in the manner of Rembrandt 
to give an expressive and dignified effect. Portrait-painters of 
the Romney type have both intelligence and skill, but their 
work is merely an attenuated repetition of what has been said 
by men who were really artists as well as skilled technicians. 

In the last two centuries, portrait-painting, as a distinct type 
of plastic art, has fallen into disuse. Professional portrait- 
painters have as a rule been mere trafficers in the methods of 
other men. Although great artists, such as Manet, Renoir, and 
Cézanne, have painted portraits, they have treated them as 
creations, not as likenesses of particular individuals; in other 
words, the portrait itself has been increasingly a pretext and not 
the main issue. The gradual decline in portraiture has been 
interrupted, however, by one very important painter. Goya’s 
psychological acumen and his command of the means of his 
art combined to make him the last great portrait-painter. After 
him, portrait-painting becomes merely an aspect of the new 
traditions, and presents no special or distinctive features. To 
those traditions, after our discussion of Goya, we shall next 
proceed. 


CHARI RIE 
GOYA 


Goya occupies a high place in both portraiture and that 
class of illustration which is really art, because information is 
conveyed by skilled and original use of the plastic means, and 
is subsidiary to the plastic form. In portraiture he has been 
excelled only by Titian, Tintoretto, Rembrandt, El Greco and 
Velasquez, while in illustration it is questionable if he has ever 
been excelled. Like all great artists his influences for good and 
for bad are perceptible in the work of later artists. — 

One of his influences for good is seen in the early work of 
Renoir, in which the painting of gauzy, diaphanous textiles gives 
rich decorative effects, and a general feeling of lightness and 
delicacy to the whole painting. Those effects in Renoir were 
clearly due to what he learned from Goya. The bad influence 
of Goya is seen in the academic imitation of his work by the early 
American portrait manufacturers, notably Gilbert Stuart, Sully 
and the three Peales. These surface imitations of art were 
created literally by the hundreds and our institutions of today 
are flooded with them. A painting done by Stuart or any of 
the Peales is always an imitation—Goya attenuated to aesthetic 
insignificance by skilled craftsmen who had no ideas, no origin- 
ality, and no command over plastic means. The crime of putting 
such paintings in public art galleries rests upon the shoulders of 
historians and officials of academies who have lauded these 
American painters by sentimental banalities totally irrelevant 
to an intelligent conception of art. 

Goya’s painting is not of a uniformly high grade, and for the 
reason, perhaps, that as the official painter of the Spanish Court, 
he was compelled to execute the portraits of kings, queens and 
nobles whose softness, inanities and affectations were the very 
antithesis of his intelligent, rugged, courageous and forceful 
personality. But when the sitter’s character appealed to him 
the resulting portrait may be hung with a good Velasquez and 
will hold its own as a distinct creation, even though it is lighter 


GOYA 207 


and less strongin art values. Goya derived chiefly from Velasquez 
and while his work is in many ways an attenuation of the plastic 
values in his predecessor, he stamped it with the marks of a 
virile originality that makes it an artistic entity. His work also 
recalls that of Bosch, a predecessor who shared his plastic gifts 
and his ability for penetrating portrayal of character. Goya's 
work stood out in an age that was poisoned with the effects of 
David’s soulless, academic imitations of the Italian Renaissance. 

The characteristics of Goya’s work are great facility in the 
use of paint, a fine sense of design, great sensitiveness to the 
aesthetic relation of objects to each other, a comparative lack 
of feeling for color, and quite a special control over significant 
line that portrayed movement and human character. He was 
such a skilled painter of psychological tendencies that a specta- 
tor is never in doubt as to whether the subject portrayed was 
honest, solid and important, or mean, trivial and stupid. Those 
qualities he rendered legitimately in plastic terms, so that the 
element of illustration is adequately imbedded in a solid matrix 
of art values. For example, in the Prado portrait of the family 
of King Charles IV of Spain, human meanness, weakness, ugli- 
ness and stupidity are accentuated by the ornate finery and 
luxury surrounding the royal group. In the portrait of Dr. 
Galos, the opposite qualities of intelligence, dignity and solid 
character are shown in the simple setting reminiscent of Velas- 
quez’s best work. 

Goya’s great command over line and his comparative lack of 
feeling for color gave his work a linear character, in which 
respect it may be compared with Ingres’s. His line is not as 
sharp as Ingres’s; it is shorter, and in defining contours it is 
wavy rather than continuously sharp and incisive. Goya’s short, 
broken line gives fluidity, animation and movement compared 
with the rigid, static character of Ingres’s drawing. In addition, 
his color, line and light are well merged in drawing, while Ingres’s 
drawing is almost entirely linear. Goya’s drawing gives an 
airy, warm, delicate, light, floating character to whatever is 
depicted and results in designs free from Ingres’s tightness, 
more simple, more real, more convincing. 

His color is lustrous, enters into harmonious relations with 
other colors in the formation of color-designs, is skillfully used 
in connection with light, and so attains forms of considerable 
plastic significance. But his comparative lack of ability to use 


218 THE TRADITIONS OF PAINTING 


color either structurally or to knit the composition firmly makes 
his work light, less solid and less strong compared to that of 
Titian, Tintoretto or Rembrandt. His color-weakness is com- 
pensated for to considerable extent by a strong feeling for com- 
position, in which his forceful line, irregularly placed objects and 
a delicate sense of spatial intervals codperate to give a stirring 
sparkle, animation and highly expressive character to the whole 
painting. Color undoubtedly functions in the ensemble effect, 
but principally because of its good sensuous quality and its 
arrangement in pleasing patterns. His most successful use of 
color is in modelling, in which, tempered with light and unob- 
trusive shadows, the color, light and line tend to form definite 
designs that give an added appeal to the delicate but solid three- 
dimensional quality of the faces, arms, hands, etc. 

No small part of the delicacy present in Goya’s best work is 
his great control of space-composition by means so subtle that 
they are likely to be overlooked. Much of this is due to his 
easy use of paint, by which he rendered color and light values 
with great sensitivity. For example, in the portrait of Dr. 
Galos, above-mentioned, the relations in space of the body, 
the table and the background are quite as subtly rendered and 
quite as moving as the space in Velasquez’s painting of “‘Don 
Baltasar Carlos in Infancy.”’ 

Goya’s ability to use light compares with that of the best 
painters. This is shown by the fine general illumination always 
present in his best work, by its use in connection with his line, 
by an appealing design formed by the spots of light and by its 
animation of the backgrounds. Light is always used in balanced 
relations with the other plastic elements and is never felt as an 
accentuation. 

Much of Goya’s painting tends toward illustration and toward 
psychological expressionism so that no matter how fine it is as 
portraiture, it is less significant as art than the work of the 
supreme portraitists—Tintoretto, Titian, Velasquez, Rembrandt 
—in whom such expression as there is is more nearly incidental 
to the plastic form achieved by the strong and balanced use 
of all the plastic means. Goya fell from the high estate of these 
men because his use of the plastic means was unequal—his line 
1S as expressive as that of any other painter, but his color is 
comparatively weak and rather superficial, so that his strong 
line is compelled to do the work that should have been done 


GOYA Pei iaro 


by other plastic means. In all of his work there is reality, but 
it is a less strong reality, it carries less moving power, less con- 
viction, than does the treatment of similar subject-matter by 
Titian, Velasquez, Rembrandt, Renoir, Cézanne. These great 
men rendered the universal qualities that make people and 
things significant, while Goya sometimes failed to do that because 
he expressed rather his own emotions about the characteristics 
of people, their goodness or badness, intelligence or stupidity. 
This results in an episodic character instead of the epic quality 
which a more detached rendering of universal values gives. In 
general terms Goya’s work is too often tinged with expression- 
ism and illustration which, while important in art, are not the 
characteristics of art at its highest level. 


CTA Res) 


FRENCH PAINTING OF THE NINETEENTH 
CENTURY 


AT the end of the Eighteenth Century there was an abrupt 
change in the tradition of French painting. The new move- 
ment was characterized by a revival of classicism in which the 
Renaissance forms of Raphael and Mantegna were used as the 
basis of the painting of the new leaders, David and Ingres. 

In what is termed “classic”? there is a tendency toward 
accentuation of line at the expense of most of the other elements 
of the picture, and that influence taken over by the French 
led to a cold formalism which dominated the academies at 
the time of David and Ingres. David adopted the technique 
of the Renaissance classic period as a whole, but in spite of 
great technical proficiency he created nothing new: he merely 
repeated skillfully what others had already done. His shallow 
color, his general attenuation of all the plastic means, and his 
debt to clearly recognizable ancestors, constitute the final proof 
of the futility of mere talent in a painter. 

In Ingres also there is the clear-cut, cold formality character- 
istic of classic painting. He had, however, the artist’s creative 
ability to make extremely interesting designs which reveal a fine 
feeling for the function of line, space and mass. The chief 
characteristic in his design is the personal and extraordinarily 
skillful manner of using line in the formation of sharp and 
clear-cut arabesques and rectangular patterns, which practi- 
cally always unify into a total design that arrests and holds the 
attention. Asa colorist Ingres is good only in the sense that he 
was able to use color as a reinforcement of linear form. His 
color has usually a pleasing sensuous quality and is used skill- 
fully in a rather literal reproduction of textures and stuffs 
with agreeable surfaces. When compared with texture-paint- 
ing by Cézanne it suffers greatly, because Cézanne adds sig- 
nificance to the object by making color an essential part of it. 
Ingres’s color and form are separable upon inspection, while 


NINETEENTH CENTURY FRENCH PAINTING 22r 


Cézanne’s are not; the result is that Ingres’s textiles are less 
convincing than those of Cézanne: we feel the effort, not the 
reality of the result. Ingres’s color is superficial and has little 
or no function either structurally or organically. 

In all good paintings the background contributes to unity. 
In Ingres the background is usually the classic arrangement of 
a solid, almost monochrome tone, which makes a mere conven- 
tional setting of little or no intrinsic interest. His great skill 
in the handling of paint rescues this element of his pictures from 
banality, and while it functions as an element of the design 
sufficiently well to save the picture from condemnation, it rarely 
contributes anything to the total aesthetic effect. The point 
may be illustrated by a comparison of Ingres with Chassériau, 
who varied his backgrounds, made them more interesting, though 
he was an infinitely inferior follower of Ingres. 


Delacroix broke away from the classicism of Ingres and 
David and found inspiration in the Venetians’ color, drama and 
pageantry, as transmitted through Rubens. The drama is inten- 
sified, there is a general swirl, a red like Rubens’s; but Delacroix 
was a lesser man than Rubens, so that the effect is one of atten- 
uation. His excessive drama also shows the influence of the 
Spanish form, as it emerged from the influence of Tintoretto, 
El Greco and Goya; however, it lacks Goya’s terseness and con- 
centration upon essentials. In consequence, Delacroix’s drama 
seems offensively romantic compared to Goya’s, which is pene- 
tratingly realistic. 

Nevertheless, Delacroix was both an important artist and a 
very important figure in the history of painting, principally 
because of his use of color. His color is brighter, deeper, richer, 
stronger than that of most of his predecessors. It enters into 
the structure of objects and functions powerfully in compos- 
ing the picture. Although he had a strong feeling for design, 
his habitual overuse of some of the plastic elements to achieve 
dramatic effects creates a disbalance which breaks down the 
design. For example, in the ‘Death of Sardanapalus,’’ the 
dramatic clouds are felt in terms of line, light and movement, 
rather than of color, as they should to harmonize with the 
remainder of the picture. In general, he is inferior to Rubens 
in nicety of feeling for color in its intrinsic quality, its relation 
to other colors in the subsidiary designs, and its function in 


222 CEE Od ROA DAO WS a aad eles Lone 


unifying the composition. The tendency to softness in the 
painting of flesh is often overemphasized, and the movement 
has not the degree of power and majesty that it has in Rubens. 
The tendency toward histrionics is not matched by a propor- 
tioned use of plastic equivalents: the effects are overdone, so 
that there is lack of the dignity which results when the plastic 
means are used economically and with a sense of proportion and 
balance. Rubens’s form is realized through balanced move- 
ment, while Delacroix’s partakes more of the nature of ejaculation. 


The emphasis upon design, with comparative neglect of sub- 
ject-matter, which has characterized the movement in modern 
art since the middle of the last century, owes much to Daumier. 
He influenced profoundly all his contemporaries, including Corot, 
Courbet, Manet and Cézanne, in this phase of their work. 

Daumier derives from Michel Angelo, Bosch, Rembrandt, 
Velasquez and the Venetians. His modelling, which results in 
the convincing three-dimensional solidity that gives grandeur 
and nobility to a finely executed marble statue; recalls Michel 
Angelo. His superb control over space by extraordinarily sub- 
tle means rivals that of Velasquez. He modified the chiaro- 
scuro of Rembrandt and achieved similar moving, mysterious 
effects. In the deep, rich color-harmonies that result from the 
use of sombre colors, he obtained color-effects superior to those 
of many important painters who used a great variety of bright 
colors. By the combination of these influences, Daumier suc- 
ceeded in condensing into a small space the effects that Michel 
Angelo and Rembrandt required larger space to render. 

Daumier, better than any other man except, perhaps, Cézanne, 
knew how to select from the literally innumerable planes that 
constitute objects in space, and thereby create something 
which has all the essentials of a naturalistic object, plus an 
added forceful, convincing reality. Of the moderns, Cézanne 
alone excelled him in ability to make color function structurally 
in those planes. His solid, three-dimensional figures attain an 
added plastic quality by the superb utilization of space; indeed, 
a figure by Daumier is felt to be in space conceived in better 
pictorial terms than the more sculptural character of Michel 
Angelo’s treatment. 

The utilization of so few planes makes Daumier’s works appear 
sketchy and fragmentary, but that is only because we compare 


NINETEENTH CENTURY FRENCH PAINTING 223 


them with their counterparts in nature. When looked at from 
a distance the meagre lines and the comparatively few color- 
spots convert the essential characteristics of an object into a 
more forceful, convincing reality than exists in nature. 

As a colorist Daumier ranks with Rembrandt in achieving 
maximum results with the greatest economy of means when he 
works with the same limited palette. When he used brighter 
colors, red, blue, orange, there results a deep, penetrating qual- 
ity that makes his paintings glow with a richness comparable 
to those of Titian and Giorgione. The color-effects realized 
by means of the sombre tones is well illustrated in ‘‘ Porteur 
d’Eau,”’ where the monumental solidity of the figure is rendered 
in varying degrees of combination of brown and ivory. That 
figure, set in fine spatial relations, is, by means of chiaroscuro, 
made to stand out against a background very closely related to 
it in color-values. In ‘The Third-class Railway Carriage,’’ the 
reds and blues of extraordinary and appealing sensuous quality 
yield color-effects of a depth, richness and glow similar to those 
of the great Venetians. He worked principally in large areas 
of contrasting colors or tones that always enter into formal 
relations with each other, and those color-forms unify into a 
strong design that determines the quality of the picture. 

His ability to use space to the successful reinforcement of 
his line and color has never been excelled. In comparison, 
Raphael’s accentuation of space seems obvious and trivial. 
Daumier’s massive, solid figures are always surrounded with a 
space which we actually feel as a reinforcing element to their 
solidity. He makes the spatial intervals enter into harmonious 
relations with his colors and tones, so that even when he uses 
only sombre tones his pictures are literally space decorations of 
the highest grade. This is decoration in the best plastic sense: 
it is definitely merged with actual structure, so that form is 
realized in its highest estate. Like Rembrandt, he succeeds in 
giving that mysterious feeling of awe, sometimes tinged with 
gloom, which comes from our contemplation of space success- 
fully used in the hands of a great creative artist. In spite of 
the often trivial character of Daumier’s subject-matter his 
paintings are highly charged with the mysticism which is the 
basis of universal religion. 

His greatness as a painter was for a long time obscured by 
his obviously powerful drawing as revealed in his illustrations. 


224 DWE er RAD LT LONS £0 IPA DNGIONGS 


He overshadows nearly all of his great predecessors in his ability to 
use an expressive line which owes its force to terse rendering 
of psychological states, as well as of actual movement and poised 
movement. His merging of this line with color and light to 
render movement, makes him more important than Goya or 
Degas; Tintoretto and El Greco were his only serious rivals in 
rendering dramatic movement by successful fusion of the plastic 
means. Compared to Daumier in this respect, Michel Angelo 
is inferior, in that muscular accentuations figure more actively 
in his depiction of movement, and his modelling itself is achieved 
by means less intrinsic to painting. Delacroix’s drama is 
inferior because the drawing is less simple, less terse, the expres- 
sion is tawdry, and is unsupported by the fine utilization of 
space found in Daumier. 

His successful use of light is implied in what has been said 
concerning his use of chiaroscuro. When the light is used for 
general illumination and for chiaroscuro, the disposition of spots 
of light in the various areas of the canvas makes an appealing 
design that contributes greatly to the effect of the plastic form 
as a whole. 

His line is never sharp and incisive. Sometimes its broad- 
ness is made up of ragged edges of color and the line itself is 
in short wavy lengths that convey adequately the idea of con- 
tinuity. This character of the line is responsible for the feeling 
of movement, the sense of actual life, that Daumier puts into 
his slightest sketch. By the juxtaposition of a few lines he 
conveys a degree of reality in essentials and of force that no 
detailed painting could possibly render. His terse, expressive 
drawing is the foundation of the simplifications and distortions 
that produce forms of tremendous power. 

Daumier’s influence upon subsequent art has been immense. 
His technique in various degrees of detail was utilized to new 
ends by such important artists as Courbet, Corot, Manet, 
Cézanne, Renoir, Degas, Glackens, Pascin, Rouault, Matisse— 
to mention only a few. These influences have been subtle 
but are nevertheless present in the work of nearly all subsequent 
important painters who have utilized simplifications and dis- 
tortions in realizing design. 


Courbet made a radical break with the romanticism of 
Delacroix, and turned for subjects to the world of every-day 


SaeitewiwN LO CENTURY RFRENCH PAINTING 225 


objects and events, which he painted with force and in stark 
reality. Hestarted the realistic movement, which has dominated 
all the important painting since his time. In Corot, there is a 
glamor and romance, a reminiscence of the Watteau-Fragonard 
tradition, but freshly conceived and executed. In Courbet, 
there is poetry which takes on an added strength because of its 
detachment from romance. The obvious lyricism of Corot is 
supplanted by a naturalism which is not bald, but so trans- 
formed through Courbet’s hard, firm and waxy surfaces that 
the effect is a rare combination of power and poetry. His 
realism is dramatic without either the melodrama of Delacroix 
or the overdelicate lyricism of Corot, so that Courbet expresses 
a more comprehensively aesthetic view of the world than either 
of these men. 

Courbet advanced beyond the Barbizon School in eliminating 
the specious and obvious in achieving effective design. He 
knew better than they how to place his lights, objects, spaces, 
in the proper sequence and relation to create an organic ensemble. 
Furthermore, he used paint with such vigor that everything he 
did has intense power. He was a great colorist in that color is 
an integral and pervasive part of his design; but his color is 
often rather poor in sensuous quality and his lack of control of 
tones results sometimes in an effect of muddiness at certain 
spots. He was, however, a masterly painter, and a supreme 
artist in his feeling for the relation of things. He gives a rather 
subtle abstract of the deeper meanings of the great traditions, 
stripped of their external appendages and welded into a new and 
vigorous form. This has had a revolutionary effect upon all 
art since his day. 


In figure-painting Corot is much less tenuous than in his 
landscapes, though he is softer than Courbet, but with a soft- 
ness that is achieved by plastic means handled with such con- 
summate skill that we get a balanced creation, containing in 
solution the best traditions of painting. His figures are less 
powerful than Courbet’s, but are more appealing by virtue of 
perhaps rather obvious human values. In figure-painting, both 
Corot and Courbet make legitimate use of the great Dutch and 
Spanish traditions and convert them into new forms by means 
of personal vision and great technical skill. 


CHCA PR encld 


LANDSCAPE 


Prior to Claude Lorrain, landscape was an incidental setting 
for the life of people, sometimes done skillfully and with poetic 
insight and charm, but always secondary to the human story. 
In the early mediaeval and Renaissance painters, Giotto, Piero 
della Francesca, Mantegna, Carpaccio, the landscape proper 
was varied by architectural features, and in Mantegna and 
Carpaccio these architectural features are more important ele- 
ments in the effect than the natural landscape. Perugino made 
landscape approach nearer to modern conceptions by means of 
a beautiful spaciousness which is more purely natural than the 
architectural spaciousness of Carpaccio. In Titian and in 
Giorgione the actual sense of a living world surrounding human 
beings is very strongly felt. In Leonardo, even when the 
natural scene is very well done, as it is in his ‘‘Bacchus’”’ and 
- “Mona Lisa,’”’ its essential function in the picture is to heighten 
the appeal of the human beings portrayed. 

In Claude the primacy has passed to nature and although the 
human interest remains, the execution of the figures is generally 
badly done and they seem comparatively perfunctory and 
unreal. In him, hill, valley, sea, sky, light and atmosphere are 
really the chief actors in a drama which is the revelation of how 
nature dominates man, instead of man nature. Claude paid 
little attention to naturalistic detail in particular objects and 
concentrated upon the situation as a whole: the effect is a dis- 
tinctive feeling of place that is epic in its scope. The life is in 
the whole, not in the parts, but that life Claude could make 
real and impressive as could no other painter of landscape before 
or after him. He paints a romantic, Virgilian epic in which 
nature is felt animistically, pervaded with qualities that make a 
direct human appeal. It is surcharged with the emotions that 
come from natural landscape in its vastness, in its glamor, 
mystery, grandeur, majesty, solemnity, as we feel these in the 
Grand Canyon or the Valley of the Tarn. Judged as an inde- 


LANDSCAPE 227 


pendent entity, his is by far the most considerable of all land- 
scape-painting. Claude took the Venetian glow and converted 
it into a new form, a brilliantly lighted and colorful atmosphere 
that gives the sense of a livingness in nature, a warmth and 
charm. He made of the Italian tradition something as dis- 
tinctively French in feeling as the sense of out-of-doors, the 
jote de vivre, which we see in Watteau, Fragonard, Renoir. The 
obvious feeling of classic myth is so treated that it reinforces the 
general effect. 

Claude realizes his effects chiefly through the means of com- 
position and especially of space-composition, which create a 
plastic design of high order. The color is a pervasive effect, 
attained through the use of diffused color-harmonies, atmos- 
phere and light that make powerful contributions to the plastic 
form. Color itself, as well as the structure of individual objects, 
was a matter of secondary importance to Claude. Detail in 
objects is rendered quite freely, but is lifeless and unconvinc- 
ing. This, however, is strictly in accord with the requirements 
of his design—for any great interest in particular things would 
militate against the total effect which it was the purpose of his 
design to give. For the same reason, the drawing is without 
the terse, expressive character that it has in Daumier or Goya 
or Degas. Even the drama of the story in the subject-matter 
is toned down in individual intérest and made contributory to 
heightening the effect of design. In many of Claude’s paint- 
ings there are glaring evidences of his neglect of technical prob- 
lems raised by the introduction of the story; but it is a proof 
of his genius that he could let the subsidiary technical omissions 
take care of themselves while he confined his attention to the 
chief purpose of realizing an effective total design. Claude had 
not Velasquez’s or Manet’s facility in handling paint, and his 
pictures lack the decorative effect of those of Paolo Veronese; but 
as renderings of conceptions of very great aesthetic appeal and 
moving force they are masterpieces of the first rank. To cen- 
sure Claude because of his particular sins of omission and com- 
mission, such as the woodenness of his figures, or the perfunctory 
rendering of his trees, etc., is to apply a technical rule and to 
forget the essential role and purpose of design. 


Rubens was as a rule inferior to Claude as a landscape painter 
because the animation and movement which are intrinsic to his 


228 THE OT RA Dob DROW SPOR Ad Ne lei ce 


technique are not adapted to the placidity so often characteristic 
of landscape. Except when he depicts a storm or other evi- 
dence of turmoil in nature, his landscape suffers from the attempt 
to adapt his technique to an unsuitable purpose. His land- 
scapes often have great value as plastic forms because they are 
rendered in rich, juicy color, strong line, and fine spacing, all 
worked into a unified design that is animated and rhythmic: 
but that form is not the form which natural landscape assumes 
in its usual tranquil states, and we feel the lack of fitness between 
Rubens’s form and the natural form. Sometimes, however, as in 
his ‘‘Autumn, the Chateau de Steen,” or in the incidental land- 
scape in the “Judgment of Paris,’’ the characteristic Rubens 
swirl is so toned down that it catches the spirit of tranquil 
nature which ordinarily eludes him. 


The influence of Rubens appears in the work of the Dutch 
Seventeenth Century landscape painters—Ruysdael the elder, 
and Hobbema. Both of them adapted the Rubens swirl to 
attain the effects of rapidly moving, rather tempestuous clouds, 
heightened in drama by contrast with the much darker trees. 
The composite effect is a rhythm in the movement, and a restraint 
which makes the Dutch modification of the swirl more effective 
in the painting of landscape. Ruysdael also owes much to 
Van Goyen, in the manner of handling his themes, but he added 
enough of the Rubens technique to make an original and typical 
Ruysdael form. 


Hobbema is by far the most important Dutch painter of 
landscape. He was influenced by Ruysdael, whose drama he 
toned down but made stronger. He added also a rich velvety 
quality, in place of Ruysdael’s tendency to dryness and brittle- 
ness. The total effect of Hobbema is one of solidity, weight, 
power, attained largely through his quality of realism. Whether 
he paints a stormy day or a placid day, we get a codrdination in 
the details, a harmony between masses and figures and cloud- 
effects, which makes him uniformly strong. His realism and 
strength came from a very personal vision, rendered by skillful 
adaptations of Tintoretto’s use of light and Rembrandt’s chiaro- 
scuro, especially in the portrayal of dramatic skies and contrast- 
ing objects in the landscape. He is more literal and less original 
than Courbet, less capable of generalization and less alive to 
essentials. He often effectively simplifies, usually by varying 


LANDSCAPE 220 


the proportions of detail in one object as compared with the 
neighboring objects. His line also is so varied and so modified 
by light as to secure the expressiveness which makes his work 
far from photographically literal. As a master of design, he 
compares with Claude, but his design is usually more obvious 
and dramatic than Claude’s; it is more literally executed in point 
of detail, and his use of light is more varied and complex. But 
it has not Claude’s scope, and his tendency to be episodic, to be 
a painter of genre landscapes, interferes with his rendering of 
the bigness and majesty of nature. In general, his designs sug- 
gest the Japanese—in whom also there is a tendency to accentua- 
tion, especially in the clouds; this method was also taken over 
by the best of the Barbizon painters. Hobbema was a strong 
colorist: his color, although rarely bright, is fat, juicy, rich, and 
seems to ooze from the canvas. His debt to Rubens is seen by 
an inspection of the juicy spots of color applied to small areas 
of the canvas, in the parts of trees, houses, etc. This use is 
highly successful, though much inferior to the same device as 
later employed by Constable. 


Hobbema’s limitations may be illustrated by a comparison 
between him and Brouwer. A Hobbema, a Brouwer landscape 
and a Rembrandt hang side by side in the National Gallery. 
Hobbema’s design, achieved by accentuation and dramatization 
of light in the sky and reinforced by voluminous masses of 
clouds of varying sizes, seems almost Turneresque in comparison 
with the much simpler means, the use of a quasi-chiaroscuro 
decidedly Rembrandtesque, by which Brouwer gets the same 
dramatic power in the sky. This simplification, with freedom 
from any tendency towards virtuosity, results in a deeper, more 
powerful reality, which shows Brouwer’s much finer grasp of 
the essence of things. Hobbema has a tendency toward surface 
prettiness, while Brouwer renders the form, that is the force, 
dignity and mystery of the scene. The Brouwer has a Rem- 
brandtesque dignity which appeals to the deeper religious feel- 
ings, while in the Hobbema, superb as it is, we have the airy 
lightness of a summer day. 


Constable achieved greater power and drama than Hobbema 
and by plastic means that are less obvious and of greater aesthetic 
strength. His individual form is very different from Hobbema’s, 

16 


230 THE sURA DT PLOW SerO7 ae Bact eos 


and the difference depends chiefly upon the different use and 
quality of color. There is more color, it is deeper, richer, and 
treated in quite a special way. Instead of being put on in fairly 
large areas, it is broken into spots, tinged with spots of lighter 
paint, so that no one spot is all of the same color, but is a mosaic 
of colors in itself. This is obviously the source of the color 
technique of Delacroix and Claude Monet. The resemblance 
to Delacroix is greater, because Monet’s spots are smaller, more 
frequent, brighter, and more adapted to give the composite 
effect of one color when seen at a distance. Constable attains 
this effect also in considerable degree, but his spots of color are 
not played upon by light as are Monet’s. His light is used 
more in the old-fashioned way of a general illumination with 
local accentuations than, as with Monet, to take the chief role 
in the picture. Constable’s method gives a more realistic effect 
and firmer structural solidity to ground, trees, etc., such as one 
would see in ordinary life, without special appeal to the effect 
that sunlight actually gives to objects, as we see it in Monet. 
Constable’s color strikes us at once as rich, juicy, fat, and 
highly structural in quite his own way. There is a richness, a 
depth, which is somewhat reminiscent of the Venetians, but is 
attained by darker colors of varying shades and of uniform 
richness. These colors compose and unify the canvas. His 
feeling for landscape is akin to Claude’s, but it is for landscape 
on a far smaller scale, and is so changed in the manner of presen- 
tation that Claude’s influence is pervasive rather than apparent 
in any specific use of technique. This does not mean that the 
abstract principles of Claude’s grasp of landscape are absent in 
Constable, but that they are present in a different form. Instead 
of Claude’s grandeur, majesty, mystery, we have in Constable 
the charm of simplicity, of the imtime, the quietly mystical 
feeling of the country-side. His spirit is that of local place, but 
is tinged deeply with Claude’s vision of general landscape. 
The painting of Constable is best appreciated by a study at 
close quarters. We then see in every small area an exquisite 
quality, obtained by light, line and color, merged into a deep 
richness that has the rare quality of the surface of a fine 
porcelain marked with accidents of firing. The decorative qual- 
ity is secured by supremely skillful harmonizing of richly varied 
juxtaposed colors. This color-form gives a marvellous effect of 


LANDSCAPE 231 


strength and reality, plus a depth and richness which can only 
be compared with that of the Venetians. 

Constable’s method of painting is as broad and as truly 
impressionistic as was that of the broadest of the impressionists. 
He simplified to an extreme degree by this broad painting: a 
face, an arm, a hand, when the figure is in a landscape, will be 
rendered by one or two brief touches or strokes. Wagons, 
houses, trees, are rendered with a greater degree of naturalistic 
detail than in the impressionists, with more attention to outline, 
and less to the play of light as a constituent in these large masses. 
The shadows are dark but rich, and the broad painting enhances 
the general decorative quality of the canvases. 

Constable’s composition is of the highest quality because it is 
so merged with the color that the two function together, as in 
all the greatest painters, especially in Titian, Giorgione and 
Tintoretto. The elements in the composition are distributed in 
an original manner with little in the way of symmetrical dis- 
tribution of masses about a central mass. In general, he is as 
free from the use of obvious technical devices as any other great 
painter. His technique of color-division, designs of light, etc., 
is so merged in the general quality of the landscape that there 
is a strong, composite effect attained without perceptible means. 
The designs are harmonized throughout, and blend into a rich, 
deeply-moving general design. 

Constable derived from a number of traditions, but what he 
took from his predecessors, he individualized. He was influenced 
by Claude and also by the Dutch landscape painters, especially 
Hobbema. His rich juicy color, which came from both the 
Venetians and from Rubens, is handled somewhat in the manner 
of Rubens; but he added to what he got from these men in 
the matter of color a jewel-like quality of hisown. He influenced 
subsequent landscape-painting very profoundly, and, more than 
any other single individual, he was the father of impressionism. 
It was chiefly his example and method that stimulated Delacroix 
and his successors to turn again to color after the colorless neo- 
classicism of David and Ingres. 


Turner began as a skillful imitator of the surface aspects of 
Claude, which he diluted and made meretricious by an infusion 
of tawdry melodrama and irrelevant literary baggage. He never 
escaped from indulgence in cheap contrasts of calm and storm, 


232 THE LRADTELON SHO Patt ANNs elias 


garish color and exaggerated light. His pictures are striking 
because of their superficial colorfulness and strongly accentuated 
design. When they are analyzed we find nothing solid except 
a skillful use of the brush. Everything is on the surface, even 
the constant effort to do something for which the requisite 
grasp of plastic essentials are lacking, as, for example, in his 
imitations of Claude. Turner’s form is that of flashy illustration 
united with virtuosity and his pictures have no place in art. 

The first important landscape-painting in France in the 
Nineteenth Century is that of the Barbizon School. These 
painters derived from Claude, the Dutch and Constable. They 
made Claude’s atmosphere lighter, more silvery, sometimes 
more delicate, but they lost much of its plastic significance. 
They did the same with the influence of Constable, from whom, 
as from the Dutch, they got the zmtime, small-scale quality of 
their style. The skies suggest Tintoretto’s, but are without his 
quality or force. In Rousseau the resemblance to Claude in 
composition, in glowing atmosphere, is most obvious. Corot 
is the most important member of the school. His form is deli- 
cate, silvery, lacy, and shows the influence of the Eighteenth 
Century French in its lightness. It lacks Claude’s grandeur and 
Constable’s strength and richness, but it is essentially genuine 
and dignified in spite of its lightness and the obviousness of its 
romantic appeal. 


Courbet’s landscapes are like his work in general in their 
stark strength and realism. Like Hobbema, Courbet painted 
landscapes which are episodic rather than epic. But his power 
largely compensates for this episodic character and makes many 
of his landscapes more satisfying than those of Corot. Corot’s 
romanticism, in comparison with Courbet’s realistic poetry, seems 
weaker, less dignified, less real and less well suited to the every- 
day needs of life. 


Millet’s paintings are scarcely entitled to serious considera- 
tion as landscapes because he uses nature as a setting for a human 
story which is, in essence, sentimental. His principal claim to 
plastic consideration rests in his ability to portray movement 
of rather limited scope by means of expressive line. In this, his 
method is a modification of Daumier’s, but it lacks Daumier’s 
simplicity, directness and power. Millet’s preoccupation was 





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the sentimental one of depicting the life of the lower classes, the 
dignity of labor, the pietism of the masses. This is done well 
enough as illustration, but is of little plastic interest. He lacks 
good color, has no ability to put quality into paint, and has no 
feeling for big designs of hisown. Such designs as he employs 
are academic. The specious use of light is very much in evi- 
dence in his pictures, and the shoddiness of his technical methods 
is matched by the cheapness of his feelings. He is undoubtedly 
an artist in his ability to grasp, up to the limits of his capacity, 
the sentimental qualities of things, but those things are usually 
the obviously banal. He is essentially a story-telling painter, 
his figures are an attenuated version of Daumier’s, and his com- 
mand over plastic means is so feeble that he has little title to be 
classed as an important artist. 





BooK IV 


MODERN PAINTING 





CALA RAT 


THE TRANSITION TO MODERN PAINTING 


THE line of demarcation between painting which is and which 
is not modern is difficult to draw with exactness, but it is clear 
that impressionism made a sharp break with the traditions that 
preceded it. For practical purposes, contemporary painting 
may be said to date from the age of Courbet, Manet, Monet and 
Pissarro. In the work of these men, the motives of the later men 
are present, although not disengaged from the traditions which 
went before. The chief point of difference between the old and 
the new may be said to be that the moderns exhibit greater 
interest in relatively pure design. 

In order to show the development of this interest, it will be 
necessary to trace the evolution of plastic design as something 
in itself, apart from the question of subject-matter. Criticism 
of any work of plastic art is valid in so far as it concerns itself 
with the form the artist has created out of the means at his 
disposal, namely, line, color and space. That is as true of the 
work of the Renaissance painters as it is of Cézanne or Matisse, 
and there can be no reasonable doubt that what makes the art 
of Giotto great is not the religious subject-matter, but the 
plastic form, the design, by which deep human values are con- 
veyed. A variety of circumstances prevented the early Italian 
painters from making a sharp distinction between their interest 
in design and their interest in illustrating a religious or historical 
narrative. The spirit and state of culture of the early Renais- 
sance required that painting fulfill definite public functions. It 
was necessary that church frescoes should illustrate religious 
motives, that portraits should reproduce their originals, that 
pictures ordered by states or guilds should portray specific 
occurrences of interest to their purchasers. The general con- 
ditions were such that books were accessible only to the few, 
and their function was largely taken over by painting. All 
these circumstances made it impossible that properly plastic or 
pictorial motives should operate without constraint. The history 

17 


242 MODERN PAINTING 


of the transition to modern painting consists of an account of 
the removal of all such irrelevant compulsions, and of how the 
employment of the various plastic means came to be more and 
more directed to the realization of pure design. Such an account 
will make clear the essential continuity between painters appar- 
ently as diverse as Piero della Francesca and Picasso, Tintoretto 
and Cézanne. 

Design, as it is found in modern and contemporary painting, 
appears in the work of the early Italians whenever literal repro- 
duction is so modified that the arrangement and handling of 
objects make a more aesthetically moving plastic form. Giotto 
is, in his way, as far from literalism as Renoir. If we compare 
Giotto with his inferior contemporaries, we see at once that a 
large number of his simplifications must have been conscious 
departures from photographic representation. These departures 
are of the very essence of the appeal of his themes, and are 
clearly expressive of an interest in plastic form for itself. Even 
though his designs are always accompanied by a narrative, they 
embody the spirit, and not the details, of this narrative. In 
other words, they express a human interest of essential value in 
terms truly plastic, and such expressiveness is inevitably an 
enhancement and not a distraction. In this sense Giotto seems 
far more modern than such painters as Van Dyck, Reynolds, or 
David, in whom the role of painting is instrumental to such 
cheap human activities as personal flattery or surface imitation. 

In the early Florentines, Uccello and Fra Filippo Lippi, inter- 
est in design was so paramount that contemporary academic 
critics propagate the obvious misconception that Uccello was 
principally an experimenter in perspective. But considered 
from the plastic standpoint, his work is a striking illustration 
of the value of a design which discards an imitative presentation 
of the spatial relationships of objects in favor of one which has 
greater intrinsic value. Fra Filippo Lippi distorted perspective 
in still another manner, and achieved a design which is akin 
plastically to that used by most of the important painters since 
Courbet. | 

Design is the animating motive in drawing whenever there is 
simplification or deliberate distortion directed to heightening of 
aesthetic effect; this is clearly discernible in Andrea del Castagno, 
in Michel Angelo, in El Greco, in Rubens and other great painters. 
In all of them it is only partly representative and more aesthetic 


ParoN Sle) ONE OF MODERNE A LN DEN G 9243 


or expressive in intent. In the Fifteenth Century Florentine, 
Masaccio, the deliberate distortions of line, light, and color 
produce an appearance that is both realistic and infinitely more 
moving aesthetically than any literal or photographic represen- 
tation could be. The paintings of these great artists prove the 
absurdity of those ultramodern writers who contend that plastic 
form is an absolute creation of the artist, in which no attempt is 
made to render the quality of anything in nature. We main- 
tain that such form can be no more than decoration, that plastic 
form at its best does seek to give an equivalent of something real 
—of fundamental aspects, of essences, though not of insignificant 
detail. In fact, at all stages in the history of painting, from 
Masaccio to Manet and Matisse, the departures from literalism 
by which a more satisfactory design is secured, accomplish also 
a better effect of realism. We have not gotten farther away 
from realities, but nearer to them. 

Another form of modernism is anticipated in Botticelli, in 
whom design, free from realistic representation, concerns itself 
chiefly with decoration. This inferior order of design has its 
modern counterpart in those cubistic paintings in which design 
is reduced to the level of mere pattern; this is in the same cate- 
gory, aesthetically, as the pattern in a rug. 

When a painter uses color which departs from the observable 
color of an object, that also constitutes distortion. Such dis- 
tortion has been constantly practiced to enhance the value of 
design, notably by all the great Venetians. The Venetian glow, 
a circumambient atmosphere of color, is obviously a color-dis- 
tortion introduced to modify, harmonize, emphasize, and set 
off the colorful aspect of things, so that the effects are richer 
than those ever found in nature. The most original element in 
the work of Matisse, that is, his interestin color-combinations 
for their own sake, is thus clearly foreshadowed in the Venetians. 
But this similarity is overlooked because of the great differences 
in perspective, solidity, and the quality of colors used by the 
Venetians and those used by Matisse. 

Light is also distorted from its naturalistic effects in the 
interests of design. When used naturalistically, light accom- 
plishes some degree of modelling and sets off color; but those 
are only a few of its functions in contributing to great effects in 
art. In Leonardo, for example, it does much more than this. 
Its modelling function is strongly accentuated and the way it 


244 MODERN PAINTING 


falls upon surfaces is not in accordance with physical laws of 
literal reproduction in any given situation, but is so modified 
that it makes an independent design. It would be manifestly 
absurd to accuse Leonardo, one of the most advanced scientists 
of his day, of ignorance of the physical laws that govern the 
incidence and reflection of light; it is more reasonable to sup- 
pose that his distortions of light were used deliberately, with 
the aesthetic motive of forming an independent design. Both 
Leonardo and Raphael used light in the same manner, even to 
the extent of an accentuation that disturbs the balance of plastic 
means. A better use of light as an independent design that 
unifies in the total plastic form is found in most of the painters 
of the Venetian School, in Rubens, Claude and practically all 
the important moderns and contemporaries. 

Line, light, and color are all highly distorted in El Greco, 
partly to heighten the effect of religious mysticism, but mainly to 
achieve a form of intrinsic interest which adds to the direct 
moving power of the picture without going through the circuit 
of appeal to the emotions aroused by religious imagery. Rem- 
brandt’s chiaroscuro is distorted light employed for two dis- 
tinct and obvious purposes, first to show an objective fact, 
such as a face of three-dimensional solidity; second, as a means 
of making a particular arrangement of color and line with a 
specific effect different from that yielded by ordinary illumina- 
tion. Even in Velasquez, where the effect of the picture as a 
whole is apparently realistic, the realism, like that of Masaccio, 
is attained by many departures from exact reproduction, all of 
which contribute directly to the creation of a form far more 
effective than any arrangement of objects literally depicted. In 
all these painters there is interest in illustration, but the purely 
plastic interest is present though it has not yet appeared in 
isolation. 

The actual process of transition is to be seen in the impression- 
ists, in whose work literal representation is scarcely attempted; 
the drawing is very broad, and much greater liberties are taken 
with the actual coloring of objects than in the earlier painters. 
With the impressionists it is the mode of presentation and not 
the object presented that counts. For example, in Manet’s 
‘“Olympia”’ it is apparent that the interest lies in the composi- 
tion and that the story is unimportant. Thestrangely modelled 
and proportioned woman placed in just that position and in 


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just those relations with surrounding objects, creates something 
independent and more moving than any story. This picture 
represents an advance towards abstract plastic form when com- 
pared with, say, Rubens’s ‘‘Judgment of Paris,’ in which it 
would be much easier for the spectator to lose his way in the 
narrative. 

One of the most important innovations of the impressionists 
was the distortion of perspective. Instead of representing 
foreground, middle distance, and background in terms of literal 
perspective, they distributed light and color all over the canvas. 
The result is a homogenous color mass, embracing the entire 
painting, that forms a unified design. 

This relative freedom from literary or photographic interest, 
that is, from the interests which are not plastic, recurs in all the 
impressionists. Their very technique, the use of divided color, 
is itself a departure from literalism, since it replaces a merely 
imitative rendering of colored surfaces by one in which the 
colorfulness of objects is better realized. In Monet, the sense 
of design is less vigorous than in Manet or in Pissarro, and he 
sometimes falls victim to an interest in the effect of sunlight on 
color, which interest is more photographic than plastic. But 
the greater artists of the group, Renoir and Cézanne, used sun- 
light and divided tones only as means to the achievement of a 
design which is purely plastic. Their forms are richer, more 
powerful, more convincing, than those of any of their predeces- 
sors in the Nineteenth Century. They not only sum up the 
painters who preceded them in much the same way that Poussin 
and Rubens summed up the painting of the Renaissance, but they 
created new forms that stimulated their followers to the creation 
of still other and different plastic forms. From impressionism 
all that is best in contemporary painting has been developed. 
It may be said that in Renoir and Cézanne, design is more com- 
pletely realized in terms of color than in any of the early great 
painters, and that this would not have been possible without 
the researches of Monet and those who followed him. To them 
is due the credit for forging the instrument by means of which 
the effects characteristic of modern art at its best were achieved. 
To these achievements we may now proceed. 


COHGAL eo wie 


IMPRESSIONISM 


THE movement known as impressionism was more deeply 
revolutionary than any preceding movement except the depart- 
ure by Giotto from the traditions of the Middle Ages. It was 
foreshadowed in certain aspects of the work of Velasquez, 
Daumier and Courbet. The originators of impressionism as 
represented by particular effects of color and sunlight were 
Edouard Manet and Claude Monet, each of whom contributed 
something definite towards the tradition which has persisted, with 
varying degrees of modification, up to the present time. Among 
the participants were a number of important men including 
Renoir, Cézanne, Pissaro, Sisley, and lesser artists who worked 
with essentially the same method. Manet’s art was founded 
principally upon the Velasquez tradition but with a still greater 
simplification of means that became technically more obvious 
than Velasquez’s. He abolished dark shadows and supplanted 
them with color, or sometimes even omitted shadows where 
they would naturally fall. The impressionistic technique in its 
most complete form was developed chiefly by Claude Monet, 
with a still greater use of light in combination with bright color, 
adapted especially to recording the local effects of sunlight at 
various hours of the day. | 

Like all other important developments in either science or 
art, impressionism was not of sudden birth, a bolt from the blue. 
It was a natural evolution of methods which had their origin 
in the Italian painting of the early Fifteenth Century. We have 
seen that one of the most important contributions of the Flor- 
entine tradition was a development of atmosphere, of an aerial 
perspective, by Masaccio. He portrayed an actually visible 
atmosphere by means of light and color blended into a veil 
or haze. To this atmosphere, the Venetians added overtones 
of color and so achieved the well-recognized Venetian glow. 
Masaccio was also apparently the first to render realistic per- 
spective, by which objects remote from the eye are blurred in 


IMPRESSIONISM 251 


outline by the use of line, light, and color. This atmosphere, 
aerial perspective, and the blurred outlines of distant objects, 
were utilized by the impressionists. 

Another essential feature of their technique is the use of pure 
and contrasting colors, applied side by side in small brush-strokes 
so that the effect of the juxtaposed colors is decidedly different 
from the effects of colors used singly. We have commented 
upon the use of colors in the work of Constable, especially in 
“The Hay Wain,” and noted that the method was taken over 
with scarcely any modification by Delacroix. 

Still another technical device was the use of a large area of 
single color so applied that at a distance it gives a greater feeling 
of reality than could be achieved by the painting of details. 
Velasquez practiced this habitually, as, for example, in his 
rendering of hair by a single spot of brown, which, when viewed 
at a distance, gives a very realistic effect of hair. 

The impressionists’ method of using light also evolved from 
the best traditions. The bathing of the whole atmosphere with 
light in such a way that its various points of contact with 
masses, spatial intervals, and color, form a definite design, 
was used by Giotto and by important painters of all succeeding 
centuries. Claude used it to obtain his special glow and this, 
as we have seen, was modified in various ways by Corot and 
other followers. The Venetians, as we have seen, used light in 
a special manner to obtain particular effects, and so did Rubens, 
Rembrandt and the Eighteenth Century French painters. 

It is evident, therefore, that impressionism is an evolution of 
parts of various traditions synthesized into a new ensemble. 
The movement proper attained its characteristics in the work 
of Claude Monet, and rapidly became the method of the great 
men of 1870. Without that technique the best of the work of 
Renoir and Cézanne would not have been possible. In current 
writings on art, one encounters constantly the statement that 
Cézanne was not an impressionist, but the absurdity of that 
claim can be demonstrated from any canvas of Cézanne, from 
his earliest down to the ‘Portrait of Madame Cézanne,”’ 
which represents the perfection of his technique and the con- 
summation of his powers. It is true that if we compare, say, 
the portrait of ‘Madame Monet Embroidering,” with the above- 
mentioned portrait of Madame Cézanne, the difference between 
the two techniques is radical. But if we trace the transi- 


250 MODERN PAINTING 


tion of the early broken-color technique of Cézanne through 
its various stages of development, we find that his final and 
perfected technique is merely an adaptation of the impression- 
istic method modified in its various details. It is only by a 
study of his work at all periods that one can understand his 
method of achieving the three-dimensional solidity which mod- 
ern critics erroneously assert to be derived from the painters of 
the Italian Renaissance. The Venetians modelled by color, 
light, and line, so fused that they are indistinguishable except 
that the light is used as a high-light on the surface of the object 
nearest to the eye. Practically that same general method was 
used by Masaccio and the other Florentines, except that the 
light is more accentuated, and the color plays a less important 
role; however, with both the Venetians and the Florentines there 
is the same smooth, one-piece-like effect. In Cézanne’s model- 
ling, small patches of color are juxtaposed and the contours of 
these color-areas function in the modelling. Each of those colors 
is so mingled with light that close examination reveals not one 
solid color, or a one-piece effect, but a series of tones of the 
same general tint; this is a quite characteristic and individual 
achievement of Cézanne, and makes in itself a design that con- 
tributes no small part to the total aesthetic effect of the form. 
His work of all periods reveals that his final method of model- 
ling is an evolution from his early typically impressionistic tech- 
nique, and that the different effects at different stages of his 
career are obtained merely by modification of the contrasting 
colors in the method of their application and the size of indi- 
vidual areas. 

It is equally true that Cézanne’s use of light, whether of gen- 
eral illumination or of particular spots, comes from the impres- 
sionists, even though critics habitually state the contrary. But 
as in the case of color, sunlight has been so modified, toned 
down, and adapted to particular ends of design, that we are 
rarely conscious of it as we are in the work of the pure impres- 
sionists. 

Monet himself was so preoccupied by the particular and evan- 
escent effects of sunlight upon objects at various hours of the 
day, that the result was very often a too literal reproduction of 
the superficial appearance of things, and not enough of either the 
feeling of essentials or the aesthetic effect which results when 
plastic means are codrdinated to the larger ends of design. It 


IMPRESSIONISM 253 


is the habit now of a few of the writers on ultramodern art to 
state that the impressionists left nothing except a series of 
convincing pictures of sunlight effects on objects in the world. 
The absurdity of the criticism will be revealed if one compares 
in points of design, a landscape by Sisley with one by Claude 
Lorrain. By design we mean what each artist has accomplished 
plastically, that is, to what degree of success he has used the 
means—line, color, light, space—to achieve a form which is a 
thing in itself apart from the manner of bending those elements 
to particular ends; that is, apart from technique. In the Claude 
Lorrain there is a design that gives expression to certain human 
values, and in the Sisley is another type of design embodying 
other but just as genuine human values. The feeling which we 
get from the Sisley is rendered by plastic means unified into a 
design without recourse to virtuosity or meretriciousness. There 
is the same grasp of the general feeling of landscape but not the 
grandeur and majesty that characterizes the Claude. This 
defect is to a certain extent counterbalanced by a delicacy, a 
charm and a feeling of intime that is comparatively lacking in 
the Claude. Sisley is, in general, episodic compared with Claude; 
but the Sisley embodies the artist’s own grasp of the general feel- 
ing of landscape which Claude was the first to portray. This 
general feeling is heightened by the special intrinsic appeal of 
certain colors, and this adds to the total aesthetic effect of the 
landscape. This sensuous quality is much diminished in the 
Claude. It would be manifestly as absurd to condemn Claude 
for his failure to avail himself of the sensuous quality of color 
as it would be to condemn Sisley because he obtained special 
effects, which represent his own personal vision, through the 
medium of a technique which happens to be that of impres- 
sionism. 

The major features of the impressionistic technique are as 
follows. (1) Application of spots of pure color side by side in 
all parts of the canvas. (2) Obvious brush-work in the applica- 
tion of color. (3) Variation of the sizes of the spots of colors 
and of the sizes and perceptibility of the brush-strokes. (4) Use 
of light in connection with color in three ways: first as a sort 
_of focus upon which the light is concentrated in order to bring 
out the glow of the color; second, as a general illumination by 
which the canvas is flooded with sunlight; third, by such a dis- 
tribution of this colored light all over the canvas that a homo- 

18 


254 MODERN PAINTING 


genous color mass replaces the literal representation of perspec- 
tive theretofore employed by painters. 

With this technique certain effects can be obtained that are not 
possible by any other means, just as certain other individual 
effects can be best rendered by the special technique of Tintoretto, 
of Rubens or of El Greco. Conversely, it is obvious that the 
indiscriminate use of the impressionistic technique would yield 
results as inadequate as, for example, those resulting from the 
application of Rubens’s technique to the essentially tranquil 
aspects of nature. This is an instance of the general principle 
discussed on pages 40-43, that there are no rules for choice of 
technique except the intelligence of the artist and his feeling for 
the essential plastic qualities of whatever is depicted. Monet 
erred seriously in making the technique the means of portraying 
objects or situations to which it was manifestly ill-adapted. 
Greater artists, namely Pissarro, Renoir and Cézanne, kept free 
from his preoccupation and used the method with adaptations 
of their own better suited to express their individual vision. The 
modification in the hands of Renoir and Cézanne finally reached 
the point where the method went into solution, became gen- 
eralized, and recognizable only by a careful study of the transition 
from the original to the finished manner. 

The technique as Monet used it is responsible for some paint- 
ings which combine light, line, color and space in varied and 
unified plastic forms of aesthetic power. In all of Monet’s 
paintings analyzed in the Appendix, there is great skill in the 
use of each of the plastic elements, and sensitive adaptation of 
them to the rendering of the essential quality of the subject- 
matter, so that the technique is felt as a means and not as an 
end. Even at its strongest, however, his form is never of the 
highest grade. His composition is far from that of the greatest 
men in originality and moving power, and his drawing is without 
the expressiveness of Degas’s or Daumier’s or Renoir’s. Com- 
pared to Renoir’s, his design is much less enriched with minor 
designs, so that the component units in his paintings have 
neither the individual richness of Renoir’s nor their functional 
power. Monet’s chief deficiency is in color. When compared 
with that of the great colorists, it is lacking in sensuous appeal; 


furthermore, its structural use is only moderately successful - 


and it does not organize and compose the canvas as it does with 
Cézanne or Renoir. The result is that his form as a whole is 


_ 


¢ 


IMPRESSIONISM 255 


weaker, lighter, so that his paintings seem superficial in com- 
parison with those of his great contemporaries. 


From the standpoint of actual achievement by means of the 
skilled use of the technique, Pissarro is by far the most impor- 
tant purely impressionistic painter. His feeling for the sensu- 
ous character of color was finer than that of Monet, he had 
greater ability to use it in composing the painting, and he had 
a finer feeling for design in its larger aspects. A fine Pissarro, 
compared with the best Monet, impresses us with the complete- 
ness of its forceful unified design, its more powerful and expres- 
sive drawing, and its color of greater variety and finer quality 
pervading the whole canvas. Pissarro’s ability to make the 
juxtaposed colors more dynamic by the use of brush-strokes 
gives effects comparable to those of Renoir’s early landscapes: 
there is a rich, deep, lustrous glow that endows both the surfaces 
and the design with strong aesthetic power. His juxtaposed 
color-units are judiciously varied by the application of nearly 
uniform color in broader areas which reinforce and bring out 
the rich texture-like effects of the various objects in the land- 
scape. In this respect he is sometimes quite the equal of Con- 
stable at his best. This general method of rendering broad 
areas in single color was taken over by Gauguin and made the 
main feature of his best work. It was adopted also by Cézanne 
who enriched its effects by juxtaposition with other and differ- 
ently treated areas of contrasting colors. Cézanne used that 
method in all his work, from the earliest to the latest. 

In Pissarro, perspective is rendered in terms of color, and in a 
more naturalistic way than in the Renoirs of the corresponding 
period. His composition has a general tendency toward the 
central mass with balancing units on each side, but, as with all 
great artists, his compositions organize in a rhythmic and bal- 
anced way from any point in the canvas. His spatial intervals 
enter into rhythmic relations with the other plastic units and 
contribute to the total effect of the design, which is that of a 
rhythmic use of:line, color and mass. 

At a later point in Pissarro’s career, he originated the method 
known as pointillism, which consists in the application of color 
in very small spots all over the canvas. His work of this period 
is less convincing than that done in his typical broad impres- 
sionistic manner. It constitutes an obvious overaccentuation 


256 MODERN PAINTING 


of a plastic means, with inevitable disturbing effect upon the 
general power of the design. Sisley employed the divisionistic 
method in which delicate and light colors are made the means 
of attaining a design which is a fine rendering in plastic terms 
of a rare degree of lyric charm. 

In the hands of Seurat, pointillism was made a method by 
which color effected unity of design. His especial ability lay 
in his great mastery of space-composition. He made each 
object function as a unit in the composition, the spatial intervals 
are clearly apparent, and the units are tied together by means 
of color. He practiced Manet’s method of simplification of 
figures and objects to the extent of rendering them in broad 
masses of color with blurred contours. The combination of a 
fine sense of composition, the ability to compose with color, to 
make space dynamic, and to paint vigorously, give to Seurat’s 
best work the character of great art. 





Monet Barnes Foundation 


Analysis, page 464 


( 257) 








Vermeer Louvre 
Analysis, page 452 


( 258 ) 





Renoir Barnes Foundation 


( 259 ) 





Degas Barnes Foundation 


’ ( 260 ) 


GIA DE RAL 


MANET 


MANET was the link between the traditions represented by 
Rembrandt and Velasquez and impressionism, which Manet 
himself started, and to which he contributed much of its solidity 
and vitality. His influence upon the great impressionists, 
Renoir and Cézanne, and upon all subsequent painters of impor- 
tance, was fundamental. , 

His early work is close to Velasquez’s in general treatment, 
and especially in color and the manner of using paint to obtain 
realistic and convincing effects by very subtle means. This is 
seen in his ‘‘Boy with a Sword,” in which the color-scheme, the 
contrasts of light and dark areas, the treatment of the figure 
and the background, the delicate spatial relations, and the man- 
ner of the application of paint to effect simplicity of detail, are 
all in the style of Velasquez. Yet the painting is by no means 
an imitation of surfaces: it contains a real grasp of essentials. 

From the Velasquez manner Manet developed rapidly a 
style of his own, by contributions that started the movement 
which revolutionized the whole of subsequent painting. The 
change was not in one of the plastic elements but in all of them, 
light, color, design, manner of applying paint. He put color 
and light to new uses, devised a system of brush-work, added 
new effects to flat painting, and achieved a new design, which 
carried an aesthetic appeal independent of, indeed, in spite of, 
subject-matter. His contributions put new meaning into 
Courbet’s demonstration that the simplest objects and situa- 
tions in life can be made aesthetically moving. He replaced the 
crude, hard, matter-of-factness of Courbet’s inventions by light- 
ness, delicacy, and richness, which came from color, light and 
actual use of paint. An important factor was his marvellous 
ability to apply paint, by which the simplification characteristic 
of Velasquez was carried to the extreme and reduced to broad 
generalization of feature and detail. This generalization portrays 
the essential quality of the feeling of objects and obtains an 


262 MODERN PAINTING 


added appeal by the very manner of its execution, that is, by 
visible brush-strokes of rich, deep, but seldom very bright colors. 
He substituted for Courbet’s waxy smoothness a simple flat 
area of better color and greater charm of surface. This point 
is exemplified in the Metropolitan Museum where Courbet’s 
‘‘Les Demoiselles du Village’’ hangs in the same room with 
Manet’s ‘‘Girl with a Parrot.” 

Manet was a great colorist—a fact that is overlooked in an 
age where the color of Renoir and Cézanne has established new 
standards—and his greatness in that respect consisted in mak- 
ing color fulfill its most important function, that of composing 
a canvas. His ‘‘Dead Christ with Angels” is an early work 
much in the Velasquez manner. The broad color-areas are the 
means by which the units are tightly knit into a solid, firm 
composition, which has some of the dignity and grandeur of the 
old masters. The color is in some places dry and brittle, but 
it shows how color of comparatively little sensuous appeal can 
be made organic and, therefore, of fundamental significance. 
The painting indicates that Manet was perhaps the first of the 
impressionists to distribute areas of color and light all over the 
canvas for the purpose of achieving a design. 

His preoccupation with design, as something independent of 
subject-matter, produced results that were responsible for much 
of the important developments of painting since his time. He 
made color and light the foundation stones of a series of com- 
positional units yielding new effects, as indicated in the analysis 
of his ‘‘Olympia.” In the representation of objects there are 
the fewest possible lines, and these are never long, are not 
sharply defined, and are broken in contour. They are related 
to color and light, and thus give rise to a new kind of drawing, 
extremely simple, highly expressive of the essentials of what is 
portrayed, and a constructive factor in the total design. He 
abandoned the usual method of modelling by color, light and 
shadow, but combined a degree of three-dimensional solidity 
with an added quality of flatness that enriches the design. 

It was Manet’s recognition of the functional power of light 
that made possible some of the principal developments of impres- 
sionism as well as the later modern and contemporary move- 
ments. He used light in connection with color as the founda- 
tion of his design, as a means of creating new compositional units 
of vitality and force, and of tying these units together into an 


MANET 263 


organic whole. He made it an element in the color which he 
substituted for the dark shadows theretofore used to empha- 
size the three-dimensional qualities of objects. Sometimes he 
omitted the shadows entirely and made light function, although 
not realistically, in their stead. It was used in broad areas in 
combination with broad areas of color and effected color-con- 
trasts novel in character and of great aesthetic power. Color 
was endowed, by means of light, with depth and especially 
with luminosity. 

Color and light thus used in broad areas, together with draw- 
ing simplified to the point of extreme generalization, and the 
application of paint with obvious brush-strokes, make up his 
perfected technique. It was a very flexible instrument adapted 
to a great variety of uses. With it, he obtains the large and 
massive effects of moving color-contrasts, as in the ‘Girl with 
a Parrot,’ and the quite different results seen in the “Still 
Life’’ which hangs beside it in the Metropolitan Museum. In 
the latter picture, the brush-work is the chief means of making 
the other elements of his technique so effective. The brush- 
strokes occur in varying degrees of breadth, in different directions, 
in variety of quality, content and thickness of color, and always 
effect interior designs of line, light and color. In some areas 
there are the juxtaposed color-spots like those which Claude 
Monet used as the basis of his technique, while in the peaches 
are visible the manner of brushing and of applying paint which 
Cézanne used. Manet’s own technique, and the consummate 
results of it, are seen in the rose and its green leaves and stem. 
Here there are no details—one brush-stroke represents a leaf, 
another a part of the rose, another the stem. ‘There remains 
only the general feeling of the rose and its parts; but they have 
a reality, a conviction, that no amount of painted detail would 
give. 

Manet’s actual productions and the developments for which 
he is responsible, place him among the very great artists of all 
time. His ‘‘Boy with the Fife’’ shows how superior he was to 
Hals, how much stronger than Goya, how much more substan- 
tial than Degas, and, especially how the Velasquez tradition in 
Manet’s hands was transformed into a new instrument, with 
an increased range of power. His revelations of the possibili- 
ties of light made of Constable’s juxtaposed contrasting color- 
units the very foundation stone of the best work of Renoir 


264 MODERN PAINTING 


and Cézanne. Courbet’s realism loses none of its force, but 
gains much in beauty, by Manet’s modifications through the 
medium of line, light and color. His technical additions and 
his accomplished painting added something new, definite 
and beautiful to the essentials of objects which Rembrandt 
and Velasquez rendered with such delicate grace and skill. Manet 
was less of an artist than Rembrandt, Velasquez, Renoir or 
Cézanne, but he was inferior only to Velasquez in his ability 
to use paint. Everything that Manet painted has an exquisite 
quality that depends upon the paint itself; it is doubtful if any- 
body ever excelled him in this respect. There is present always 
a feeling for character, for the essentials of objects, portrayed 
by a line that is simplified to its utmost and related to color and 
light to produce powerful and deeply expressive drawing. His 
feeling for the music of space, subtly used, compares with that 
of Rembrandt and Velasquez. It is this command over the 
plastic means that makes every part of his best work alive with 
compositional units, tied together by means of color and light 
into a powerful organic whole. In his best work we feel the 
technical dexterity, but it is buttressed by so many good quali- 
ties that it does not appear as virtuosity. Unfortunately, as 
with many skilled technicians, Manet’s vanity prompted him to 
“show off,’’ and the frequency of that exhibition of weakness 
bars him from the class of the highest artists. 


CHAP ibn ty 


RENOIR 


AT all stages of his career,* Renoir’s work was as personal and 
his use of the plastic means as original as that of any painter 
since the time of the Renaissance. His earliest work was done 
under the influence of Courbet and of the Velasquez-Goya tradi- 
tion; but Courbet’s naturalism is freed from its heaviness and 
the Velasquez-Goya influence is endowed with a new delicacy 
and charm reminiscent of the Eighteenth Century French 
painters, though with an added note of strength. 

From the very start Renoir’s mastery of color and his extraor- 
dinary facility in using paint are the outstanding characteristics. 
His work of the early seventies is a long succession of pictures 
that, for color and difficult achievements with paint, compare 
with any by his great predecessors. The paintings of figures 
and of interiors at that period have deep reality with a strength, 
delicacy and charm that make them comparable to the best work 
of Velasquez, Vermeer, Chardin and Corot. Goya’s superb 
rendering of the light, diaphanous quality of stuffs is carried to 
greater heights by Renoir’s finer feeling for color: a piece of 
filmy material covering a darker one is so painted that the 
individuality of each textile is reinforced by a rich but trans- 
parent glow. 

These early pictures of Renoir were painted before the develop- 
ment of the impressionistic use of divided color tones. At that 
period he worked somewhat in the manner of Manet’s simplifica- 
tions and broad brush-work but with more and richer color and 
with less evidence of Manet’s obvious technique. ‘There is no 
suggestion of the reds which he afterwards employed profusely, 
but there is great sensuous richness everywhere, heightened by 
the blue tinting of the shadows, variegated in the background 
by chords of color, merged with line, and so pervasively active 
as to function powerfully in composing the picture. The draw- 
ing is done chiefly with color and there is a striking fluidity of 
line. Every painting is a composite of many subsidiary designs, 


* See also Appendix, pp. 469 to 484. 
19 


266 MODERN PAINTING 


made up of line, light and color, and merged into units that 
relate themselves to each other harmoniously. The light 
arranges itself into a subtle pleasing pattern and also contri- 
butes to the modelling, in which color does not yet operate so 
powerfully as in the later pictures. The three-dimensional 
effects are not emphasized but are subtle, achieved without 
apparent effort,.and they have a degree of convincing reality 
akin, sometimes to that of Vermeer or Corot, sometimes to 
Velasquez’s. 

The transition to Renoir’s next period is marked by a change 
in technique. In the pictures painted in the late seventies there 
are suggestions of the impressionistic use of juxtaposed brush- 
strokes or spots or streaks of contrasting color, which at a dis- 
tance fuse into a single expanse of bright color; but the effect 
is a certain obviousness of technique which was later overcome. 
Contrasted with his earlier pictures, these show a greater variety 
of colors. The rather uniform blue and ivory previously employed 
are supplemented by reds, yellows, and browns, used sometimes 
pure, sometimes modified with light, so that a whole gamut of 
color-variations is secured. As time goes on, this method of 
painting in juxtaposed color-spots is used more and more, but 
it is always used judiciously and is varied by means of broad 
areas of paint in certain parts of the canvas. This method 
causes the colors to melt into each other and gives a creamy, 
velvety quality, as in the “‘Pourville’’ landscape, and an opulent 
decorative effect which Monet never secured. At other times, 
the predominance of color-spots used in connection with bright 
sunlight, as in the “‘Bougival’’ landscape, yields comparatively 
superficial effects, more like those of Monet and Sisley. 

In all of the landscapes of the early eighties there is extensive 
use of the divisionistic manner, but its application to different 
material is so infinitely resourceful that both the color and the 
compositional effects are far more varied and powerful than those 
of Monet. 

Renoir’s researches in the impressionistic manner developed 
new technical resources that merged perfectly with his previous 
Velasquez-Goya-Manet methods. The realistic results of his 
earlier period were increased by sensuous charm, by an added 
structural use of color, and by a glowing iridescence. His con- 
tributions had changed the impressionistic technique from a mere 
device into a power for greater creation and more complete 


RENOIR 267 


organization of the whole painting. It became one of the great 
and firmly founded traditions. 

During the eighties Renoir developed temporarily a third 
style, marked by sharp, incisive line and dryness, almost acidity, 
of color. Its obvious linear quality led critics to assert that 
Renoir’s work of that period is closely akin to that of Ingres, 
but the resemblance is all on the surface. The radical differ- 
ence is that in Ingres the line is fundamental and the color, which 
is comparatively perfunctory, thin, and unreal, is mere decora- 
tion added to the linear structure. In Renoir’s even of that 
period, it is the color that is fundamental: it builds up structures 
and welds together compositions as it never does in Ingres. The 
sharp line is merely a particular way of bringing colors into 
relation, and it compels the eye to follow the rhythms of color as 
constituting masses in deep space, rather than the movement and 
direction of the line itself. Ingres’s line is tight and restrained, 
while Renoir’s is free and more expressive of abandon. 

Renoir’s manner at this time is often considered a regression 
to the methods of earlier painters, but, as pointed out in the 
analysis (“‘Woman Carrying Baby’’) the modelling and all the 
other uses of the plastic means are distinctively Renoir’s own. 
That the method was clearly an experiment in the direction of 
new color forms is shown, and justified, by the fact that the 
sharp line and the acid color gave a fluid, luminous quality to 
the forms such as no other painter ever achieved except in 
water-color. The worst that can be said of these pictures is 
that the color is structurally less successful than it later became 
and it was probably for that reason that Renoir abandoned the 
method. 

In the late eighties, he turned his attention toward the devel- 
opment of a technique that would enable him to render the 
movement of volumes in deep space, and in 1889 he succeeded 
in doing it with great conviction and appeal. These masses 
are so free from minute detail or obvious realism that to an 
inexperienced observer they often seem to be scarcely solid at 
all. But plastically considered they realize perfectly the essence 
of the massive quality, without its adventitious detail, in a 
degree comparable to that of Rembrandt and Velasquez. The 
rhythm is made more pervasive and powerful (see analysis of 
“Mt. St. Victoire,’’ page 475) by the flow of color throughout 
the picture, partly by the modification of local color in the interest 


268 MODERN PATN TING 


of harmony and partly by the use of a color suffusion which 
recalls the Venetian glow. As Renoir perfected his individual 
form, the rendering of masses gradually became less clearly 
defined, more floating and vaporous, but not less convincing. 
The impressionistic technique has become more and more gen- 
eralized, and the individual brush-strokes appear subtly, and 
only in restricted parts of the canvas. By this time Renoir 
had reached the point of giving the large-scale effects of land- 
scape with an impressiveness worthy of Claude, to which he 
added the grasp of the spirit of local place, the intwme charm 
of Constable. This combination of epic grandeur, of charm, 
and of a dramatic quality reminiscent of Hobbema, appears in 
Renoir’s landscape painting throughout the rest of his life. 

In the nineties the technique itself comes to be so completely 
flexible that a distinctive quality is given to each repetition of the 
same subject in only slightly altered form. At this period he 
painted a series of pictures of the same young girl, each of which 
is so varied in color and drawing that there is no suggestion of 
duplication. Delicacy, charm, and reality are attained in each 
one, but they are different and distinctive in each case. Draw- 
ing, by means of color, has become extremely fluid, and there is 
fidelity to the characteristic feeling of things worthy of Velas- 
quez. Literalism is completely avoided and all the ordinary 
means of rendering solidity, outline, perspective, begin to be 
replaced by obvious distortions. The interest in pure design 
comes to be more and more in control. Recognizable objects 
never fully disappear, but they are very freely rendered and 
their significance becomes almost purely plastic, that is, they 
are conceived chiefly as elements in the design. It is ability to 
accomplish this, with no loss of conviction, no degradation of 
the form to the status of mere pattern, that marks Renoir as an 
artist of the first magnitude. His design is created out of many 
lesser designs, so that every part of his canvases has an intrinsic 
interest as well as a functional interest, the whole forming a 
monumental effect comparable with that of Giorgione or 
Titian. His pictures have come to be as varied and harmonious 
as a musical symphony or a work of polyphonic scope. 

At the beginning of the present century, Renoir had reached 
the full control of his powers and thereafter he deepened and 
enriched still further his color-values. In his figures there is an 


RENOIR 269 


increasing use of red and a more voluminous and more voluptuous 
three-dimensional solidity. In his landscapes there is often a 
major theme of emerald, ruby, or lilac-blue, around which there 
is rose melting into violet, blue into shimmering green, with a 
pearly atmosphere, giving an effect of deep quietude, dignity, 
serenity, majesty, peace. In everything he painted there is a 
more convincing massiveness, and a more powerful three-dimen- 
sional rhythm. The means he adapted to this end is a swirl not 
unlike that of Rubens, but of larger scope and much more 
moving. Color becomes paramount—it indicates perspective, 
suffuses the whole painting, increases the contrapuntal richness 
of forms, welds the units together into a rich and powerful 
design. He left his preceptors constantly further behind, and 
attained by his own technique to much of the classic spirit 
of the best Renaissance painting. This classic spirit becomes 
increasingly evident towards the end of his life, and shows how 
profoundly he had assimilated and lent new life to all the valu- 
able influences in art. More than that of any other painter 
his work constitutes an epitome and rounding-out of the whole 
history of painting. 

We may now summarize Renoir’s characteristics as thev 
appear in all periods of his work. The foundation of his paint- 
ing is color asit came from Fragonard and Rubens, and through 
Rubens from the Venetians. In the use of color he was an 
impressionist, though he transcended everything in that tech- 
nique which is suggestive of formula or mannerism. It is not 
only in the use of color that he advances upon Rubens and 
Fragonard, for his spirit is essentially different. There is at 
all times in Rubens’s and Fragonard’s work a kind of remote- 
ness and, in consequence, loss of perfect reality. In Rubens, 
this took the form of the flamboyant, the grandiose; in Fragonard, 
of triviality, of artificiality. Renoir’s debt to the Dutch, to 
Velasquez, and to the realists Courbet and Manet of his own 
century, is evidenced by his much greater interest in the things 
of every-day life. His temperament made him love and observe 
attentively the commonplace people and incidents of life, so 
that in his hands they cease to be commonplace and become 
suffused with poetic charm. He is at home with them and he 
delights in enveloping them with the wealth of sensuous quality, 
the voluptuousness, that came from his own rich endowment. 


270 MODERN PAINTING 


His delight is that of an artist, not of an animal, for his volup- 
tuousness is free from sensuality. He has an unerring grasp 
upon essentials; hence the truth and naturalness of his drawing, 
the success with which he makes his people reveal themselves 
in the performance of some ordinary act, such as taking hold 
of a cup or handling a needle, or in the unpremeditated play 
of their features. His sense of the dramatic in the events of 
every-day life is comparable to that of Degas, but unlike him 
Renoir never despises the people whom he shows acting. His 
pleasure in the beautiful things of the world is revealed in the 
richness and delicacy of his textiles and in his rendering of 
human beings pulsating with life and glad to be alive. 

The sensuous charm and the general decorative quality of 
Renoir’s work is achieved by color-chords of a wealth nowhere 
else paralleled. In Rubens the color is less brilliant and less 
real, and he lacked the characteristically French delicacy of 
Renoir, which refined and made more subtle the elements of 
decoration. In Renoir, everything is fluid, light, transparent; 
the flesh is luminous, the atmosphere is pearly; when the sur- 
faces are hard, their color is jewel-like. In his work, vulgar 
scenes and persons lose their vulgarity. A group of them, seen 
as an ensemble, resembles the flowers in a bouquet. His nudes 
are symbols, not naked women. Nobody ever painted with more 
improvisation, more spontaneously, freely, than he did. 

All this decorative quality is not purchased at the expense of 
form, of reality, for his rich, juicy, varied, glowing color is also 
structural and compositional. It functions in design, reinforces 
drawing and perspective, and heightens the rhythms of the 
picture. His line is not only rhythmic but is as expressive of 
the character of personality, of drama, as is Degas’s. He can 
give the grandeur and majesty of landscape in a degree com- 
parable to Claude's, and he advances upon Claude in that he 
secured these effects by means of color. In landscape on a smaller 
scale he rivalled Constable, and in his sense of the zntime quality 
of interiors he is the equal of Chardin. He has the poetry of 
Giorgione, but it is a more homely poetry, less arcadian, with 
less of the pathos of distance. 

His weaknesses spring from the same source as his strength— 
his absorption in the life that is visible to the eye, his unreflec- 
tiveness, his incomparable sensuous charm. He has not the 


RENOIR | 271 


impersonality or quite the subtlety of Velasquez, nor the supreme 
economy of means, the restraint, the poignancy of human 
values, the mysticism of Rembrandt. He is less imaginative 
than Giorgione, less elevated than Titian, less dramatic than 
Tintoretto, less powerful than Michel Angelo or Cézanne, and 
less completely absorbed in the essential, to the neglect of all 
secondary matters, than Giotto. But purely as a plastic artist, 
he has greater command of means, greater variety of effect, and 
certainly a greater decorative quality than any other painter. 


GibA TR a 


DEGAS 


DEGAS was one of the most active and potent figures in the 
art life of the time of the impressionists. He never shared their 
interest in the effects of sunlight on the color of natural objects 
as a thing in itself, nor did he adopt in its entirety the impres- 
sionists’ technique. He belongs to that group principally 
because he shared their belief that the chief end of a painting is 
to attain design, and that all situations in life, no matter how 
trivial, have their own intrinsic qualities that can be rendered 
in plastic terms. 

It is in his method of approach to the subject-matter that he 
is in some respects the most individual, as well as one of the 
strongest, of the group of impressionists. His attention was 
centered upon the events of every-day life, in which he saw 
and emphasized the ironic and sardonic. His varied and highly 
expressive line has never been excelled, and only a few men like 
the early Dutch painter Bosch, and later, Daumier, Goya, 
Glackens and Pascin, approach his degree of skill and power. 

His line is rarely sharp or incisive. It is sometimes as heavy 
as Cézanne’s in defining contours; usually the line is rendered in 
terms of color which is ragged at the edges, so that the drawing 
is very often accomplished by wavy edges of color. His design 
owes its strength to the infinite variety of patterns produced by 
the meeting of various objects or parts of the body, posed in 
unusual positions, generally tending toward the dramatic. The 
weakness of his design lies in the fact that the predominance of 
line relegated other important plastic elements, space and color, 
to comparatively subsidiary positions. 

His patterns and his interest in the episodic were a perfect 
combination for the production of illustrations that penetrated 
to the essential psychological significance of the events of daily 
life. Nearly all of his pictures are trenchant, biting, sardonic 
comments upon ballet girls, laundresses, women getting into or 
out of bath tubs, people at cafe tables, race tracks, etc. The 


DEGAS 273 


situations involve acts of life that most people have to per- 
form, but Degas accentuated the essential triviality of the acts. 
However, when we abstract from the subject-matter and turn 
our attention to his use of the plastic means, we find that he 
had a fine sense for composition: that he established the rela- 
tions between objects which create powerful plastic forms. He 
was especially successful in the composing of individual units in 
a painting, say a group of dancers in a scene on the stage; when, 
however, there are several groups, he seemed to lack ability to 
unify these groups into a composition which is plastically whole. 

The color in his oil paintings is usually dull, drab, dry, and 
he seems unable to effect harmonious combinations between 
even bright colors. His own consciousness of that fact led him 
to work mostly in pastel. In that medium he sometimes rises 
to great heights as a colorist by reason of the scintillating iri- 
descence of brilliant colors used harmoniously, although he 
rarely succeeded in using color effectively in composing the 
picture into a unit of uniform strength. In some parts the 
color will be weaker either in quality or in carrying effect than in 
other parts, so that the general effect is rather of spots of color 
than a strong rhythmic flow which embraces all of the picture. 
His pastels have an animation and sparkle which is totally lack- 
ing in the majority of his oil paintings. His modelling in pastel 
is generally more successful: the three-dimensional quality, 
while light, is of sufficient solidity to achieve a degree of reality 
that goes well with the general lightness that pastel effects 
require. 

These disadvantages in the use of color are offset to a consid- 
erable extent by the many effects obtained by the skilled use 
of his highly expressive line. The many and diverse uses to 
which he puts the line give rise to a series of formal relations, in 
almost any unit selected, so rich that those areas compare favor- 
ably with similar units in the work of men who used color more 
successfully. In pastel, where he could control the color better, 
he used it in connection with line to get a composite effect in 
which the color-function, while always subsidiary to the major 
function of the line, is positively contributory to the general 
effect of the particular form. 

Degas’s high place in art is determined chiefly by the character 
of his line and the great variety of specific effects which he was 
able to produce with it. Naturally, his line was especially 


274 MODERN PAINTING 


adapted to the representation of movement, and in that he is 
not excelled by any other artist. But a still finer and more 
delicate use of line is that which portrays poised movement, 
and in this respect Velasquez was Degas’s only serious competitor. 
The poised movement of Velasquez is much more important as 
an artistic creation than that of Degas because the means by 
which it is accomplished are more comprehensive and more 
subtly used. In Degas it is usually possible to see the very bend 
of line or combination of lines that renders the poised movement. 
The result, as a thing in itself, is quite equal to that of Velasquez, 
but we always feel it somewhat as a tour de force, which would 
be virtuosity in any man to whom it came less naturally and 
who could render it in less variety of forms than could Degas. 

It may be said, therefore, that Degas belongs rather to the 
class of great illustrators than to the class of great artists repre- 
sented by Renoir and Cézanne. He was too much occupied 
with showing the world the phases of life which provoked his 
ironic criticism to render broader effects representative of the 
deeper human values. In many of his works there is such an 
uneven degree of quality in the execution of parts of bodies, 
objects, etc., that plastic unity is destroyed. 

Practically the only developments of impressionism that Degas 
employed to any extent are the distortion and simplification 
of objects by which they are rendered in their broad general 
terms, with comparatively little attention to detail. To a les- 
ser extent he employed also the impressionistic method of using 
lighted color-areas. His distortions of the parts of the human 
body result in obliterated features and sometimes grotesqueness 
or monstrosity, but they enhance the plastic ensemble. 

Degas created nothing that can be compared, in wealth of 
plastic forms or deep human values, with the work of either 
Renoir or Cézanne, but he did create a series of new forms which 
are his own, and in which there is an airy, light delicacy, grace 


and power that reveal him as an artist of high rank. No follower | 


of Degas has ever succeeded in reproducing his plastic forms. 


CHAPTER UNI 


CEZANNE 


CEZANNE began working at the time when impressionism was 
at its height, and the influences upon him were in large measure 
the same as the influences upon Renoir. Both men were impres- 
sionists in their technique and remained impressionists through- 
out their careers, even though each used the method in distinc- 
tive and individual ways.* Renoir and Cézanne were each deeply 
influenced by both Delacroix and Courbet. The first, but only 
fleeting, influence of Delacroix is seen in the romantic, dramatic 
subject-matter in Cézanne’s earliest paintings. The profound 
lesson which he learned from Delacroix, and which lasted all his 
life, was the great effects obtainable from the structural and 
organic use of color. From Courbet, he absorbed the simplifi- 
cations and vigorous painting of naturalistic objects, which, 
combined with the later influences of Michel Angelo, El Greco 
and Pissarro, determined the form taken by his whole-hearted 
devotion to the construction of abstract design. 

The early influence of Pissarro upon him was so strong that 
the first impressionist paintings by Cézanne could almost pass 
for Pissarros of extraordinary vigor. He took over his entire 
technique—quality and kind of color, its use in juxtaposed spots 
varied with broad areas of color, and his manner of using light. 
His grasp of fundamentals, and his ability to form original and 
powerful designs, seem to have been innate, for it appears in 
his earliest work, long before he had developed his final and 
characteristic form. Consequently, his use of Pissarro’s method 
resulted in paintings that were stronger than Pissarro’s own, 
more solid, better organized by means of color. His better 
sense of line, color, mass and space in their purely plastic func- 
tion makes a form stronger than that of any of his contemporary 
impressionists. 

Cézanne’s evolution into his own distinctive technique was a 
slow process because he was deficient in natural facility in the 
use of the brush. From the first he was clearly an independent 


* See also Appendix, pp. 484 to 498, 


276 MODERN PAINTING 


artist, but it was a long time before he could paint with the 
assurance of Renoir, and his early work lacks the finish and 
mastery of medium which is to be seen in Renoir from the start. 
The sense of effort and strain remains even in his mature style, 
which never attains to Renoir’s unconscious ease and natural- 
ness. Although Renoir’s painting also represents a gradual 
progress toward his final form, his early pictures are much more 
complete in themselves than Cézanne’s and do not so clearly 
represent experimental and tentative stages. 

During the course of Cézanne’s experimentation, the impres- 
sionistic technique is always much in evidence. ‘The interest in 
color, the use of light to vivify the color in selected spots and also 
as a general illumination, are unmistakably in the impressionistic 
manner. But even before he had attained a degree of skill in 
the use of paint equal to Pissarro’s, there is a noticeable advance 
in the dynamic power of the color in the design, and in its use to 
produce more convincing effects of three-dimensional reality. 

In the analyses in the Appendix, the progress of Cézanne 
towards his fully characteristic later manner is treated in detail. 
His progress towards the use of a thinner impasto resulted in 
an increasing ability to render the effects of solidity in terms 
free from the sculptural tendency of his earlier thick paint. 
This thinner paint transformed the roughness of effect in his 
early work to a lightness and delicacy that involves no loss of 
strength. As his style becomes more characteristically his 
own, the ability to compose in terms of deep space increases, 
with great heightening of conviction and moving power. At 
the same time, there is a softening of contours. His line rarely 
becomes blurred as in Renoir, but it loses its earlier tendency to 
hardness and comparative isolation from the other elements, 
and comes to be realized more intimately in union with light 
and color, especially color. His composition departs from con- 
ventionality and flows rhythmically throughout the whole of 
the canvas. The shapes of the objects become less naturalistic 
and more arbitrarily subordinated to the requirements of design. 
This tendency to distortion of shape has always been the quality 
in Cézanne which aroused the scornful wonder of the inexperi- 
enced observer, and is chiefly responsible for the effort which is 
required to appreciate his painting at all. He has none of the 
charm which Renoir has for the superficial observer. Such an 
observer does not, of course, see the essential plastic virtues of 


CEZANNE 277 


Renoir, but he does see an immediately pleasing lyric quality, 
while in Cézanne he is likely to see nothing familiar. Cézanne, 
in other words, is a connoisseur’s painter. 

Cézanne can be appreciated only after all considerations of 
naturalistic accuracy have been dismissed. His distinctive 
achievement was to establish a series of relationships in deep 
space between solid three-dimensional objects, so that their 
ensemble is a unified plastic design of great aesthetic power. This 
feeling for the dynamic relationships between objects and the 
ability to codrdinate the resulting forms into a design involved a 
specific genius, which in the period of his maturity resulted in 
designs as original and as moving as those of Giotto. To achieve 
these designs he violated all conceptions of probability or 
possibility. Objects appear suspended in the air, in complete 
defiance of the law of gravitation, figures and faces are distorted 
into monstrosities. Both color and outline are treated as 
motives to be worked with as design requires, and in no sense 
as requirements laid down by the actual appearance of things 
in the real world. These distortions are to be found not only in 
the faces and other parts of the human body, but also in all the 
plastic means, including line, mass, space: they are funda- 
mental to the planes themselves. These planes are changed 
from the normal in every conceivable way, and the new forms 
are built up by the interpenetration of these distorted planes. 
In all of his work there is a perceptible, a definite idea, which 
he himself called the motif. Naturalistic considerations in 
the representation of subject-matter were sacrificed to the desire 
to make lines, perspective, and space so fuse in planes of color 
that all the elements come into equilibrium. In other words, 
objects, deprived of their resemblance to real things, were 
merely the means used to integrate the plastic elements into 
new and distinctive forms. 

The essential material for all his forms was color, and he built 
everything up out of color. His modelling is done by means of 
modulation of color and not by the usual method of variations 
of the same color to indicate the gradations of light by which 
in nature the curving surface of a solid body isshown. Cézanne 
used strokes of color, which give the essential effect of solidity, 
but in a form far removed from that of nature. The result 
is a richer plastic effect, with no loss of conviction. In model- 
ling he also used light in the usual way as an additional means; 


278 MODERN PAINTING 


but modulation with color is the essential characteristic, is dis- 
tinctively his own method, and it shows the thoroughness with 
which he carried out his intention to utilize the prime material 
of painting, color, to the greatest possible extent. His manner 
of using color represents an originality and an economy of 
means comparable to Rembrandt’s, and is perhaps even better 
than Rembrandt’s, because color is in itself richer than chiaro- 
scuro, it has more possibilities, and is more distinctively the 
material in the medium of painting. In the achievement of 
subtle effects by means of color he rivals Velasquez, though 
he was by far the lesser craftsman. He raises the functional 
quality of color to its supreme degree and thus carries the 
Venetian tradition to its consummation. Perspective, draw- 
ing, composition, and the creation of solid structure are all 
done chiefly by color. Even in his distortions, the line is either 
color itself or is so merged with color in a moving formal rela- 
tion to adjacent colors as to make the drawing more powerful. 
The distorted planes in his best work consist of an equilibrium 
of colors fused into new forms which are Cézanne’s very own. 
In these, color enters into fluid, rhythmic relations with all 
the other plastic elements, and organizes the painting by means 
of distinctive forms. This rhythmic interplay of color-forms is 
Cézanne’s great achievement, and was never realized better by 
any other artist. Color animates everything, without any 
recourse to the moving power of illustration. 

Cézanne’s forms are essentially abstract, but they are achieved 
through the medium of subject-matter that has sufficient point 
of contact with the real world to establish relation with our 
funded experience of real things. For example, the hands in 
the “‘Portrait of Madame Cézanne”’ are obviously distorted 
and unnatural, but they recall human hands, in their essential 
and abstract quality, with a forceful, moving reality greater 
than any photographic imitation of hands could produce. In 
this power to give the feeling of the real while avoiding all literal 
realism, Cézanne vies with Rembrandt and Velasquez, in whose 
paintings there is the same realism without photography. More 
than either of those painters, Cézanne stripped away every- 
thing not absolutely essential, and through new technical means 
succeeded in giving that sense of profound fidelity to the deeper 
aspects of things, which is the characteristic of all great art. 

Cézanne ranks with the greatest painters of all ages because, 


CEZANNE 270 


by the use of means purely plastic and by a new use of the most 
difficult of those means—color—he realized a form of the highest 
conviction and power. In his elimination of everything not 
entirely necessary to design, he followed in the footsteps of 
Michel Angelo, Tintoretto and El Greco, whose distortions he 
applied to new purposes. From Velasquez, through the inter- 
mediation of Manet, he learned to simplify. But in him the 
whole tradition of simplification and distortion was merged with 
the impressionistic technique and became something radically 
new in the history of painting. His power is equal to Michel 
Angelo’s, and is more effective because it is achieved by means 
entirely intrinsic to painting, instead of the suggestions derived 
from sculpture to be found even in the best of Michel Angelo’s 
work. His landscapes have the majesty of Claude’s, com- 
bined with a more austere, rugged force; they have an added 
purity because he dispenses with anything of even the degree of 
obviousness of Claude’s atmosphere. His perception of the 
significant enables him to put into a simple still-life a monu- 
mental quality that makes Raphael’s “‘Transfiguration’’ seem 
trivial. 

Cézanne’s shortcomings arise partly from the same source as 
his greatness and partly from his never wholly perfect command 
of his medium. As a painter he never rises to the greatest 
heights, those of Velasquez, Rembrandt, or Renoir. Cézanne’s 
laborious efforts to force and coax paint to express his ideas 
and feelings are perceptible at all stages of his work. Even in 
his most mature paintings he sometimes lacked that command 
over paint which makes it seem that an artist can execute 
without apparent effort, which is the mark of the supreme 
craftsman. Another disadvantage is that his resolute adherence 
to essentials left him comparatively little interest in the sensu- 
ous charm that accompanies a specific decorative quality. In 
this respect he is inferior to all the greater Venetians, to Velas- 
quez, to Renoir, and even to Rubens. This does not mean that 
his surfaces are at all bleak or barren, but there is not the wealth 
of decorative quality throughout every area of his pictures that 
there is, for example, in Giorgione’s. In Renoir there is a 
similar, powerful plastic form made up of solid masses rhythmi- 
cally arranged in deep space, but in addition we have a greater 
variety and richness of color-chords and a more ingratiating 
charm, such as exists in Giorgione and Titian. The example of 


280 MODERN PAINTING 


these artists also shows that it is possible to have strength of 
plastic form in combination with a’ greater variety of human 
values than Cézanne presents to us, so that his purification of 
plastic form is not attained without loss. This defect is offset to 
a certain extent by the sensuous richness of the plastic forms 
themselves, in which the color is deeply integrated. 

He was the equal of the greatest artists in making his forms 
embody the abstract feelings, the human values, that the 
objects and events of every-day life communicate. He rendered 
the essential qualities of those feelings stripped of the irrelevant 
and accidental, and endowed them with the pervasive mystery, 
power and charm that makes them moving, vital, and beautiful. 


GA PDE Reve ir 


PUVIS DE CHAVANNES 


PUVIS DE CHAVANNES lived at the time of the impressionists, 
but in another world, one which kept his work free from their 
influences. His world was that of Giotto and Piero della Fran- 
cesca, and he succeeded in putting into his oil painting con- 
siderable of the quality which gives frescoes a peculiar charm 
and force. His mural decorations, when looked at in an ensem- 
ble, as in the Hotel de Ville at Amiens, are strongly reminiscent 
of both Giotto and Piero, but they are not imitations. 

Puvis’s work is distinctive in design, drawing, quality of color, 
and ability to bring the compositional units into harmonious 
relations. His feeling for space and his suave, smooth, skillful 
use of paint have rarely been excelled. In all of these respects 
his models were Giotto and Piero, though he was not the equal of 
either of them except in the use of paint and space-composition. 
His subjects lack the deep religious fervor of Giotto. He is 
more like Piero, especially in the use of cool color that goes well 
with the impersonality of his work. Much of this effect is due 
to the use of a delicate but deep blue in combination with other 
delicate colors, notably a fluffy white, and shades of lilac that 
have the fundamental feeling of blue. In his large mural decora- 
tions, the figures and other objects are composed with consid- 
erable of Giotto’s ability to establish an easy, graceful flow from 
one figure to another, and from various groups to other groups. 
Compared to Giotto’s, his drawing is weaker, less expressive of 
finer grades of movement, and it has more of the static quality 
of Piero; he was far, however, from being the equal of Piero in 
his drawing as a whole. 

His compositions have usually a fine sense of balance, as well 
as a processional flow of one compositional group-unit into another 
that gives a fluid character to his general design. His drawing 
is light, delicate and graceful. His line, which at a distance 
looks sharp and incisive, is seen upon close inspection to be 
ragged in its contour, with color instead of sharp line function- 

20 


282 MOD ERNE AL NEE LANG 


ing as the division between objects. His modelling of figures 
into a light three-dimensional solidity is well adapted to the 
delicacy of the general design. There is more departure from 
naturalistic representation than in the early frescoists, and in 
some objects this non-naturalistic character tends to the feeling 
of unreality. There is the classic, delicate quality of Poussin in 
many of Puvis’s works. 


lon Pe hav Uh 


THE POST-IMPRESSIONISTS 


Van Gogh’s style was based upon the impressionistic tech- 
nique, which he modified chiefly in matters of detail. He enlarged 
and greatly elongated the spots of color used by Monet into long 
narrow streaks, and applied them in visible brush-strokes some- 
what in the manner of Manet and of Hals. He followed Manet 
too in the employment of broad areas of color, by which his more 
strictly impressionistic painting is diversified. His modelling of 
faces by perceptible brush-strokes is similar to that in Renoir’s 
and Monet’s work in the late seventies. 

The personal note in Van Gogh’s design, in which he departs 
most from the impressionistic: manner, appears in his use of a 
figure or mass against a background contrasting with it in color 
and usually in manner of treatment. The figure or mass is 
almost always greatly simplified and distorted, with the brush- 
ing very apparent in the drawing of features and contour. The 
ribbon-like brush-strokes of bright color and with many varia- 
tions in size and direction, make up a design of line and color. 
The contrasting background may be comparatively a mono- 
chrome containing a light-pattern or an ornamental design of 
colored figures, or it may be animated by a swirl or by contrast- 
ing areas of color. In any case, the contrast between the central 
mass or figure and the background as a whole produces a dra- 
matic effect, to which the very dynamic quality of the ribbon-like 
streaks of color, the strikingly vivid and unnatural hues 
employed, and the character of the distortions, all contribute. 
The generally wavy, rhythmic line and the frequent sudden 
transitions from minute color-divisions to broad areas of unbroken 
color heighten the dramatic contrast. With these means, Van 
Gogh infuses a spirit of emotional tenseness into themes ordi- 
narily placid or composed, and a feverish, almost a delirious, 
quality into situations intrinsically dramatic. 

His color is bright, rich, and juicy. It lacks the structural 
value of Renoir’s and Cézanne’s, and it does not function so 


284 MODERN PAINTING 


effectively in organizing the painting in terms of color. It is 
always rhythmic, but the rhythms are never so rich and varied 
as in Renoir and Cézanne, and the total compositional effect of 
the color is rather light. Although in Van Gogh’s best work 
there is a definite design, the obviousness of the means rele- 
gates him to a lower status than that of his greatest contempo- 
raries. His designs are generally flat and his modelling only 
approaches three-dimensional solidity. 

Van Gogh’s success in achieving a form that is original, 
animated, and appealing, entitles him to a high place in the 
painting of the later Nineteenth Century. His influence upon 
subsequent painters has been considerable, especially in the 
employment of daring color-contrasts both in the realization of 
design, and in the expression of intense personal emotion. 
Matisse and Soutine owe much to him in both respects, even 
though they used his accomplishments as a point of departure 
and not as a model for imitation. 


Gauguin’s earliest pictures are very much in the impression- 
istic manner of Pissarro, under whose tuition he started his career. 
Later he gave up the divisionistic method and used color in 
broad uniform areas slightly modulated with light and varied 
with occasional spots of contrasting colors. This is the method 
of his Tahiti pictures, which represent him in his characteristic 
manner. 

The essential features of his perfected method are a skilled 
use of broad areas of single colors placed in contrast with each 
other, a quite individual color of an appealing sensuous quality, 
and a good utilization of space. The formal relations thus 
established constitute composition of a high order, but the gen- 
eral effect partakes more of the nature of decoration than of a 
successful merging of the structural and decorative elements 
into a substantial plastic form. Much of the popular appeal of 
his Tahiti pictures is due to the exotic character of subject- 
matter, in which the romantic surroundings and the facial 
expressions are instrumental to a facile and rather cheap mysti- 
cism. His drawing is rather sharply linear and only partially 
merged with color. The general effect of his figures is static 
even when they are supposed to be in movement; this static 
character is intentional, in the interest of design. His model- 
ling is accomplished by rather obvious use of color in flat areas 





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tion 


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tet Oe VP RR Sol ON TS Ls 289 


so that figures have very little three-dimensional feeling. That 
treatment enters well into the general flatness and decorative 
nature of his design and provides a fitting embodiment for the 
subject-matter of primitive, dark-skinned, semi-nude people. He 
makes an effective use of the dark people by placing upon them 
bright and gaily patterned sarongs, the colors in which have 
an appealing sensuous quality. In his drawing of figures and 
objects, there are distortions of color, line and light that give 
them positive values as plastic forms but differentiate them 
considerably from naturalistic appearances. 

Gauguin’s paintings may be considered as essentially decora- 
tions which have a considerable degree of artistic significance 
by reason of the successful use of mass, color and space. His 
forms are slight compared to those of his contemporaries, 
Cézanne and Van Gogh, and there is a suggestion of affectation 
in both the nature of the subject-matter and its plastic treatment. 


The debt of Maurice Denis to Gauguin is shown in his use 
of broad areas of color which enter into relations with each 
other to give color-forms of great decorative value. He modi- 
fied Gauguin’s general practice in various ways, but the basic 
principle of color-contrast remains. Denis sometimes treats one 
of the broad areas of uniform color with small spots of white in 
the manner of the pointillists. Figures are rendered by smaller 
areas of very light and unusual tones, such as light greens, 
pinkish mother-of-pearl, lilac, lemon-yellow, etc., placed in 
relation to the broad color-areas and to objects rendered in 
bright but less exotic colors. The repetition of these contrast- 
ing units in various parts of the canvas, makes a series of appeal- 
ing and distinctive patterns. 

His drawing, like Gauguin’s, is deliberately static. The 
element in his work which is lacking in Gauguin’s is the use of 
accentuated long stretches of line, defining the contours of 
figures which have a classic feeling merged with a fine, graceful, 
delicate porcelain-like quality. The classic and exotic-colored 
figures placed in finely conceived spatial relations to each other 
and to the broad areas of bright but more conventional color, 
constitute his characteristic plastic form. 

Like Gauguin’s, his work is essentially decorative. It is more 
varied in color by reason of the strange quality of the tones, is 
given a more linear quality by the use of long expanses of sharply 


290 MODERN PAINTING 


incisive line, and is made more brilliant by floods of intense 
light. This combination of color and line with light gives to 
figures a three-dimensional solidity extraordinarily delicate but 
quite real from the plastic standpoint. Matisse is indebted 
somewhat to Denis for the quality of his color but he carried it 
much further in both its structural and its functional uses. 


Bonnard uses color successfully to form individual designs 
in the canvas and to organize the painting. His color-forms 
are enhanced in both their structural and decorative functions 
by linear designs made up of the various objects in the scenes 
represented. His work is impressionistic more in the manner 
of Renoir than that of Monet; that is, juxtaposed color-spots 
are used only as an incident to serve a particular purpose and 
do not dominate the entire canvas. These color-spots are used 
in connection with broad areas of nearly uniform color modified 
by streaks of light to give a richer and more varied effect. His 
color has never the depth nor the rich, sensuous quality of that 
of Renoir, Monet, Sisley or Pissarro. Sometimes it tends 
toward the garish, but it always has a delicacy and force that 
make him one of the important, though minor, colorists of the age. 
His drawing is done by ragged, irregular lines of color that indi- 
cate rather than define the parts of the body or object portrayed. 
His best results are in small compositions representing interiors, 
and to these he succeeds in giving an intime feeling which has 
both power and charm. 


CHAPTER: TX 


THE IMPRESSIONIST TRADITION IN AMERICA 


THE most important of the American painters who worked 
in the manner of the impressionists are Glackens, Prendergast, 
and Lawson, each of whom eee something personal to 
the tradition. 


Lawson took over the impressionists’ technique in all its 
phases— divided tones, direct effect of sunlight on objects, atmos- 
phere, and the painting of landscape in which objects are treated 
chiefly from the standpoint of design. His technique follows 
that of Monet but his drawing is more rugged, his color has a 
deeper and richer sensuous quality, and it organizes the painting 
more effectively. These modifications make his best work 
stronger than that of Monet from the standpoint of general 
design. It has the lyric quality that one feels in natural land- 
scape but this is not as deep nor as delicate as in Sisley, nor 
has his color the limpid, fluid delicacy of Sisley’s. Compared 
to Pissarro, his work is weaker in drawing, in color, in originality 
and in general design. 

While his best results are comparable to the best of Monet’s, 
they lack the latter’s originality and the great variety of color- 
effects achieved by the use of sunlight and divided tones. Law- 
son’s finer feeling for the plastic function of color is shown by his 
more accurate placing of deeper colors in areas where they func- 
tion more strongly in effecting a general harmony throughout 
the canvas. He is open to criticism because of the comparative 
lack of originality in the use of the impressionistic technique; 
consequently his work is suggestive of formula painting. The 
sameness of the technique becomes rather monotonous, although 
he used it successfully in the painting of the most diverse con- 
ditions in nature: the fresh bloom of early spring, the hot haze 
of summer, the cold steely blue and white of winter. In the 
treatment of each of these themes, he succeeds in conveying the 
spirit of the landscape in the terms of a good design. The 


292 NEO UDUBSRUN GSE eAtlee tale Cx 


successful use of rich, appealing color, a good feeling for space, 
and the ability to make an ordered sequence of objects in the 
composition contribute to a plastic design are Lawson’s own 
achievements. Judged by his work prior to 1918, he is by 
far the most important American landscape painter up to the 
present time. 


The chief characteristics of Glackens’s work are his expressive 
drawing, a fine sense of the drama of the events of every-day 
life, an extraordinary feeling for color, and great command over 
the medium of paint. In all of these respects, he bears com- 
parison with the great leaders of impressionism. His early work 
was done chiefly under the influence of Manet, and while it is 
much less bright in color than his later work, it reveals his fine 
control of line, color and composition in space. The later influ- 
ence of Renoir was so strong and so clearly perceptible that 
superficial critics have dismissed him with a statement that he 
is an imitator of Renoir. But that facile judgment leaves out 
of account the reasons for the influence, and the differences that 
are clearly distinguishable. Psychologically, Glackens is more 
akin to Renoir than any other painter of our age. Both men 
were born artists and they painted as naturally, as easily, and 
as inevitably as they breathed; each had a keen interest in the 
events of every-day life and had the ability to select and portray 
the picturesque elements with their intrinsic drama; each had 
an extraordinarily penetrating eye, a rare feeling for color, and 
the ability to put those colors in harmonious relations with 
each other. There the similarity between the two men ceases; 
but it would be impossible to have men of such similar personal 
characteristics produce paintings that were not alike in certain 
respects. 

With an artistic endowment which enabled him to realize the 
plastic function of color, Glackens was naturally more attracted 
to Renoir than to any other painter. Just as Renoir selected 
from Rubens and Fragonard certain plastic elements which he 
used as points of departure for his own forms, so has Glackens 
selected the color-forms of Renoir and put them to other uses. 
Nobody who knows the work of both men could fail to recognize 
the fundamental difference of those color-forms, and the personal 
and distinctive character of Glackens’s results. 





Sisley Barnes Foundation 


21 ( 293 ) 





Lawson Barnes Foundation 


( 294 ) 





Glackens Barnes Foundation 
Analysis, page 501 


( 295) 





10n 


Barnes Foundat 


Glackens 


( 296 ) 


DMEPRESSTONIST TRADITION; IN’ AMERICA (207 


Glackens, like Goya, Daumier and Degas, was a great illus- 
trator, and like them the information he gives is always rend- 
ered by a choice of plastic means that conveys the essential feel- 
ing of the situation without resort to literary or sentimental 
props. His black-and-white work is quite on a par with that of 
Goya, Daumier and Degas in expressive power. It has also an 
individual quality and often an added strength because of the 
simplification which makes his drawing of almost epigrammatic 
terseness. In fact, it is so forceful and so expressive that for 
the past twenty years many of the best illustrators have imi- 
tated or adopted the drawing which Glackens originated. Any 
account of a painter’s work which left out the function of illus- 
tration in a painting would miss entirely the quality which 
individualizes the work of many great artists, including Giotto 
and Michel Angelo. Glackens’s work has an obvious illustra- 
tive character, but it is so firmly placed in a setting of other 
plastic values of a high grade that the painting becomes a work 
of art in which illustration is only an element. The chief plastic 
means which converts his subject-matter from illustration to a 
more comprehensive plastic form is color. His color is the equal 
of Renoir’s in its sensuous quality, it is just as effectively used 
in drawing, and functions well in organizing the picture. What 
makes Glackens inferior to Renoir is that he has never been 
able to use color structurally to give the solidity that makes 
Renoir’s figures so real; consequently, his color-forms are not so 
active as Renoir’s in establishing the dynamic relations between 
volumes in deep space. 

He realizes forms that represent the highly successful merging 
of all the plastic elements—line, light, color, space. He has 
ability of a rare order to make those forms embody the funda- 
mental essentials of the events of every-day life. His work is 
impersonal in the sense that Velasquez’s work was impersonal; 
that is, he selects the picturesque and renders it without com- 
ment of his own. He is free from Degas’s ironic representation 
of the triviality of events, and has none of Daumier’s tendency 
to emphasize the comic or absurd, nor Goya’s penchant for 
showing human traits that bespeak meanness or pretense. He 
shows with detachment the essential picturesqueness and human- 
ity of the events represented, and his only comment upon life is 
that it is pleasant to live in a beautiful world. 


208 MODERN PAINTING 


Prendergast’s paintings have such obvious colorful charm ren- 
dered by means of so striking a technique, that the decorative 
quality is likely to obscure the formal structure. He is, however, 
an artist of high rank who has succeeded better than most of 
his contemporaries in making an effective design triumph over 
obvious technique and incidental subject-matter. 

The origin of his method is found in the impressionists, Monet, 
Pissarro and Sisley, and in the pointillist’s application of num- 
erous small color-spots all over the canvas. Upon the latter 
method, Prendergast founded a technique which differs materially 
from that of any of the other impressionists. He so modified, 
amplified and increased the power of color-spots that the effect 
is totally different from that of any of his prototypes. The 
manner in which his colors relate themselves gives rise to a 
great variety of formal relations that constitute his individual 
note. 

His drawing is extraordinarily broad and loose. Contours 
are ragged, the bodies of figures are often blurred, but there is 
a fine unity to all this broadness and looseness in making the 
distorted figures function as both masses and color in the design. 
His interest in design led him to deprive figures of all their 
naturalistic associations, so that they have only slight resem- 
blance to human beings. Faces are mere circular splashes of 
color—sometimes solid but occasionally varied with spots that 
may be interpreted as suggestions of features. The distortions 
are in such extreme degree that sometimes a child is larger than 
a donkey; a woman almost as tall as a tree; a dog a mere juxta- 
position of a few vague, dark lines and color-spots, with a leg 
extending off into the distance like a branch of a tree; occasionally 
there is a mass so vague that one cannot say whether it repre- 
sents a tree or a figure. The gown of a figure will be painted 
with a brilliant orange and the face a spash of the same color. 
Yet these figures are plastic creations of reality and power. 

The most potent factor in Prendergast’s work is color. No 
painter ever had a finer feeling for its sensuous quality or used 
it in a greater variety of pure colors. It is rich, juicy, and 
glowing, and he applies it in daring contrasts with harmonious 
results. It is this staccato use of light and color that makes 
Prendergast’s color-forms powerful and distinctive. It is not 
color in isolation from the design: by its very manner of use it 
succeeds in making an organic whole of the compositional units. 


Pierce ot ONS be-bk ADTETON DN AMERIC A) 209 


Renoir also occasionally used similar bright colors interspersed 
with light in a sort of staccato color-movement all over the 
canvas. 

Space, also, he manipulates to the end of design. His control 
of perspective is so great that when the purposes of design 
demand, he renders the infinity of distance as subtly as Titian or 
Velasquez, although in an entirely different manner. In a group 
of objects, the space between the components enters into relation 
with the color and line to make a design that is formally related 
to the other units. His paintings have the general effect of 
flatness principally because there is little attempt at modelling 
faces or bodies. 

The feeling which Prendergast puts into his work is that of a 
child with penetrating vision who sees naively and is able to 
express its simplicity and naivete in a design in which beautiful 
color is an outstanding characteristic. That child-like naivete 
is not an affectation but the natural unaffected expression of 
the artist’s temperament as revealed by his whole life. In his 
joyful appreciation of the beautiful things of life he remained 
a child up to the time of his death. To express that individual 
vision by the skilled use of plastic means represents one of the 
forms of consummate art. 


CHA PLE Rex 


THE MANET TRADITION IN AMERICA 


By far the greatest amount of popular painting done during 
the past generation has been a repetition of several great tradi- 
tions, mostly the Dutch and Spanish, especially as given a mod- 
ern version by Manet. It has been chiefly an attenuation of 
the traditions by academicians totally uninspired, with nothing 
to say but nevertheless able to find a market for their wares with 
an undiscriminating public. To that category belong Benjamin 
West, Gilbert Stuart, the Peales, Sully and similar artistic non- 
entities of the past. The principal reason for their popular suc- 
cess is that mere craftsmen with a certain amount of technical 
skill can reproduce with considerable fidelity the obvious super- 
ficial technique of great artists. Consequently, the mere facil- 
ity in imitation by means of the brush has been current as the 
art of painting. This lamentable condition has filled our public 
galleries, the art academies, and many noted private collections 
with paintings that are totally devoid of artistic value. They 
vary in quality of surfaces only, whether Sargent, Henri or 
Seyffert is the particular manufacturer. 

There have been, however, several painters of considerable 
talent who have been able to make a fairly personal and com- 
petent use of the great Dutch and Spanish traditions. The two 
outstanding American painters of that character in the past and 
present generations are Thomas Eakins and George Luks. 


Eakins was essentially a school-painter who created nothing 
that can be said to have been truly original; but he had such a 
fine feeling for composition, for the relation of objects to each 
other, and such command of the medium of paint, that his works 
are personal expressions even though they are not creations of 
_ the first rank. The best of his work is represented in the por- 

trait of “‘Dr. Agnew.”’ (Analysis, page 503.) This illustrates well 
his ability to render convincing solidity, poised movement, and 


fel tee VA Nebel RADI ELTON, EN AMERICA sor 


effective space-relations with great skill. It shows the essentials 
of the subject, including character and dignity. His limited 
palette in this picture gives the effect of economy and subtlety, 
but in his average work it seems merely to indicate poverty of 
resources. In the majority of his paintings, the tight drawing, 
the inadequate feeling for color, and the stereotyped quality of 
themes, relegates him to the status of the skilled academician. 


Luks works mostly in the Dutch tradition, and his most suc- 
cessful results have been in the realm of genre-painting. The 
best of these latter have a degree of power that compare with 
that of Metsu and Dou. His palette is restricted, usually to 
various shades of brown and white, with an occasional note of 
blue or red. This limited range of color he handles with great 
skill both in regard to harmonious color-combinations and as 
contributing to the effect of reality and power in the painting 
as a whole. But his feeling for color is quite limited, and when 
he attempts to increase his palette the results are disastrous to 
the picture and to the color-relations. . 

He is represented at his best in the painting ‘‘ The Blue Churn.” 
(Analysis, page 503.) This picture is Rembrandtesque in its chi- 
aroscuro and in the placing of a figure against a background of 
only slightly different color-value. It shows his use of Manet’s 
brushing to emphasize essentials and avoid undue literalism, 
and to render the linear and tonal values of the subject with 
simplicity and vigor. It exhibits his command of composition, 
not in any extraordinary degree of force or originality, but to an 
extent sufficient to achieve a large measure of plastic quality. 

In his less successful pictures, the balance of elements is dis- 
turbed. His ability to produce striking effects by brush-work 
much in the manner of Hals, and to some extent of Manet, has 
lead him to overwork that element so that many of his paint- 
ings savor too strongly of virtuosity to be classed as great art. 
In general, he shows very little feeling for either the quality of 
color or the placing of it in the canvas to secure harmonious 
results. It is usually superficial and tends toward being mere 
filling-in between contours of objects. Textiles rarely have the 
basic feeling of the qualities which make them what they are. 

In the majority of his work there is an obvious sentimentality 
rendered by specious means, which gives a quality of cheapness. 


302 MODERN PAINTING 


However, his expressive line used in connection with color and 
light give his drawing an element of strength and power which 
saves practically all of his work from being classed as mere 
virtuosity or sentimentality. His command of paint enables 
him to put such quality in many of the objects depicted that, 
abstracted as units, they are definite and personal creative forms 
of a high order. But too often this finely executed unit will be 
in relation to another object in which virtuosity and sentimen- 
tality are the chief characteristics. The result is that this 
divergence in power creates a disbalance between the constitu- 
ent elements so that there is a lack of integration of the units 
into an organic whole. 


The work of Henri represents technical skill without artis- 
tic creativeness, but it has an obvious flash which his followers 
have taken over and attenuated to even more complete artistic 
insignificance. 

Henri’s painting is in the Manet tradition of broad brush- 
strokes, but these are isolated from their meaning and made the 
main theme unsupported by any quality in the use of the other 
plastic means. It consists almost entirely of the kind of por- 
traiture characterized by the conventional placing of figures 
against backgrounds varying from contrasting colors to those 
close in value to the ones in the figure. The background and 
the figure are never conceived as parts of an organic whole, so 
that his canvases are practically two pictures. Superficially, the 
effect of his work is striking, but analysis reveals nothing sub- 
stantial except brush-strokes: the line, drawing, color and space 
have little or no relation to real art. In his color there is not 
a vestige of artistic feeling. It is used in accordance with the 
Maratti color-system, which prescribes a set of formulas for 
color-relations: this represents the height of mechanical aca- 
demicism, from which individual feeling and expression are 
excluded. The result is that Henri’s color is superficial, almost 
devoid of sensuous appeal, and without organic function either 
in building up the masses or in unifying the composition. 

These plastic deficiencies are heightened by an obvious illus- 
trative appeal, which takes the form of character-interpretation 
rendered by plastically illegitimate methods: the features of 
the face are painted in broad masses of colors which refuse to 


Dee AON tek hoe ON DN AMERICA’ 202 


coalesce into an effective ensemble. There is usually an obvious 
peculiarity in the kind of clothing, or a twist to the face, together 
with a literal use of line or spot of color that is equivalent to 
decorative photography instead of expression. His manner and 
methods have been taken over by a host of younger men, includ- 
ing Bellows and Randall Davey, and have become a fixed aca- 
demic form. This has been capitalized by skillful technicians 
to produce a great number of portraits and other paintings which 
embody popular substitutes for art. 





BOOK V 
- CONTEMPORARY PAINTING 








CHCA or. iad 


THE TRANSITION TO CONTEMPORARY PAINTING 


In the chapter on The Transition to Modern Painting is men- 
tioned the fact that the distinctive note in the painting of our 
own day is the development of interest in design as something 
comparatively independent of the ostensible subject of the 
painting. Almost all modern painting shows the influence of 
impressionism, especially as that movement was shaped and 
brought to its consummation by Renoir and Cézanne. In the 
work of both of these artists, the interest in achieving design 
primarily through the medium of color is paramount, but the 
interest in color takes a different form in the two men. Renoir’s 
color is more varied, brighter, more sensuously charming and 
more decorative. In Cézanne it is more restrained and is used 
more in the interest of solidity or mass. But in both artists it 
assumes throughout the canvas a functional power to effect 
composition in a degree unequalled in the history of painting. 
The abstraction of color as the most potent of all the instruments 
of design is thus due to the researches of these two men. 

In the evolution of their techniques, Renoir and Cézanne 
adopted methods that came from Velasquez, Hals, Goya and 
Courbet, through Manet’s simplifications and generalizations. 
These latter were achieved principally by the broad brush-strokes 
that enabled Manet to give the essential quality of things, 
stripped of adventitious matter, and in a form that added a 
new note to general design. The concentration on the essential 
visible reality which we saw to be the distinctive contribution 
of Velasquez was thus revived, and made a part of the living 
tradition of the time. It still further assisted in the work of 
making an independent non-naturalistic design, which should also 
reveal penetratingly the nature of things. Manet’s method of 
using his brush had comparatively little direct influence upon 
Renoir and Cézanne, but Manet’s contribution as a whole was 
in solution in most of the painting of the time, and it constantly 
reappears in the work of subsequent painters. Unfortunately, 


308 CON TIE.M 'Pi® (ROACRAY PEA aN lela 


his brush-work survives also as an academic cliché, as in Henri 
and his tradesmen-followers, while his form as a whole is carica- 
tured and commercialized by such portrait-manufacturers as 
Sargent. 

We have already summed up the details of the advance made 
by Renoir and Cézanne upon the impressionistic painting which 
constituted their point of departure. In them, impressionism 
was further fertilized by all the great traditions of the past, and, 
taken together, they represent the highest development of plas- 
tic form. Simplification and distortion are more obvious in 
Cézanne’s work than in Renoir’s, and this fact has led to the 
view, at present much in vogue among superficial critics, that 
Cézanne represents a stage further in advance than Renoir in 
the progress towards the goal of a pure art. Such a view is due 
partly to an assumption, which is false, and partly to insensitive 
observation. The assumption is that which has been given cur- 
rency by the advocates of cubism and other art-forms, namely, 
that pure art involves a complete breach with reality, that 
plastic values are totally detached from human values. We have 
already seen the falsity of this assumption, and it will be further 
indicated in the discussion of cubism. The critics’ fault in 
observation is that of failing to see in Renoir a more complex 
and profound originality than in Cézanne. The obvious surface- 
characteristics of Cézanne’s works lend themselves to detection 
by academic critics, and imitation by academic painters, more 
readily than do the complicated fundamental characteristics of 
Renoir. Cézanne’s distortions, the simplicity of his composi- 
tions, and the comparatively limited range of his palette—all 
these are easily seen and mimiced; but these things are far from 
explaining his power. Cézanne’s greatness depends upon the use 
of color to achieve his peculiar effects of convincing massiveness, 
spaciousness, and compositional relations. To appreciate these, 
it is necessary to be able to abstract color and discern its func- 
tion, its structural and organizing power; alleged appreciation 
not based upon such discernment is plain illusion and self- 
deception. But where the ability to grasp such color-values 
exists, there will also be ability to see in Renoir’s paintings 
greater wealth of color-relationships, based upon the use of an 
infinite variety of shades and modulations with light. The 
color-forms in Renoir’s canvases are far richer and more numer- 
ous than in those of any painter before or since. The difference 


Pinot LION TO “CONTEMPORARY ‘PAINTING 309 


between Renoir and Cézanne is this: Cézanne concentrated 
his efforts upon a much narrower range of problems; he attained 
a quite individual strength, but he became something much 
nearer a specialist than Renoir. The specialist is, of course, 
more advanced in his particular province than a man of broader 
activities, but he is not therefore more original. It is true that 
Cézanne was extraordinarily original in his own sphere, but 
Renoir’s originality was the more universal, subtle, and inimit- 
able. Critics desirous of showing Renoir as at a disadvantage 
compared with Cézanne point to Cézanne’s more numerous 
imitators among painters of the last decade or two, and assert 
that he has had more influence upon subsequent artists than 
Renoir. To anyone with the slightest knowledge of history, the 
fallacy of judging the fertility of a man’s work by its influence 
on the members of the generation just following his own will be 
apparent. The truth is that any profound or far-reaching 
originality requires for its understanding and use more than the 
very few years that have elapsed since Renoir’s and Cézanne’s 
activities. 

The art of painting as it emerges from the hands of Renoir 
and Cézanne has in its possession as never before two all-impor- 
tant principles. First, the principle of pure design, embodying 
the values of human experience but not tied down to a literal 
reproduction of the situations in which these values are found 
in ordinary life. Second, the principle of color as the most 
essential of all the plastic elements, the means most entirely 
intrinsic to the medium of paint. This latter principle means, 
pragmatically, that effects of mass, composition, space, drawing, 
are most moving aesthetically when rendered in terms of color. 
Upon this foundation rests all that is truly significant and 
important in contemporary art. 

Factors contributing to the development of modern design 
are found also in the work of Gauguin and Van Gogh. Other 
very important sources of inspiration are negro sculpture, in the 
case of Picasso, Modigliani and Soutine; and the art of Persia, 
India, China and Japan, in the case of Matisse and his disciples. 

In Gauguin, there reappear the broad areas of color which are 
to be found in Manet, but with a different effect. The areas 
are broader, more purely decorative and do not show Manet’s 
characteristic modification by perceptible brush-work. In Manet 
the design is intended much more to render the essential natural 


310 COON TEMP ORIAR YiebiA LONGING 


quality of what is depicted, while in Gauguin the forms are less 
expressive and they function more obviously as means to a 
design which is much more nearly mere pattern. This undoubt- 
edly makes Gauguin a less important artist, but it also made 
his pictures fertile in suggestions for the painters who followed 
him. In Gauguin’s general exotic quality and in his unusual 
color-contrasts, there is an anticipation of the color-scheme 
which was later used with more subtlety, variety, and power by 
Matisse. 

In Van Gogh, we see the exaggeration of the color-division of 
the impressionists into long, narrow, ribbon-like streaks of color 
which give a general animation to the canvas and brightness to 
the color itself, in addition to making a specific design in which 
line and color fuse. In this respect, Van Gogh’s painting is 
more expressive, less merely decorative, than Gauguin’s; but a 
similar step is taken towards the isolation of design, and the 
decorative motive is also present. The strikingly unnatural 
shades of color and the distortions of line and mass are steps 
in the same direction, and these, together with the other char- 
acteristics of Van Gogh’s painting, have been utilized freely by 
contemporary painters. 

Negro sculpture has enriched contemporary painting to such 
an extent that a brief discussion of it is necessary. In the early 
periods of Greek sculpture figures were conceived as combina- 
tions of back, front, and side bas-reliefs. The achievement of 
complete plastic freedom was a late exploit, which arrived after 
the great period of Greek sculpture had passed. It was at all 
times complicated by the motive of representation, so that the 
arrangement of masses, of head, trunk and limbs, which would 
have made the most effective plastic ensemble, was never found. 
Literature, in other words, stood in the way of plastic form. 
With negro sculpture, the literary motive was absent and the 
artist strove to distribute his masses in accord with the require- 
ments of a truly sculptural design. There is no suggestion of 
the bas-relief: the figures are three-dimensional through and 
through. Its freedom from anything adventitious or meaning- 
less gives negro art a sculptural quality purer than that of the 
best Greek periods and also of Renaissance sculpture which is 
Greek in a modern guise. In this respect, negro sculpture is 
quite the equal of the best periods of Egyptian sculpture. 

Greek statues had an enormous influence on the whole history 


Pero Ne LOSCONTEMPORARY ~-PAINTING 32r 


of painting since the Renaissance, and the pictures in which 
this influence is most apparent, for example, those of Leonardo, 
represent in a double sense a bastard art. They are imitations 
in painting of another art, and this other art is in itself hybrid, 
a cross between pure sculpture and flat representation. Hence 
the confusion of values in Leonardo and all who showed the 
influence of his example. This confusion was not incompatible 
with considerable achievement, since even Renoir is clearly 
within the classic Renaissance tradition, but it has unduly 
limited the range of possible plastic effects. 

Negro art, in exhibiting a form which is in the fullest sense 
sculptural, has enforced a sharper distinction between the pos- 
sibilities inherent in painting and sculpture, respectively, and it 
has also put at the disposal of painting a new source of inspira- 
tion. It is not a confusion of values that a painter should find 
inspiration in another art: the confusion arises when he directly 
imitates the methods of that art. Leonardo’s solid forms are 
such an imitation, but the use of negro motifs in the work of 
Matisse, Modigliani, or Soutine is not. The latter do not 
attempt to realize the three-dimensional qualities of negro 
statues: what is taken over is rendered in the terms proper to 
painting, and so has nothing of the mongrel quality which is to 
be found in the contemporary revivals of Renaissance art. 
Matisse, Soutine and Modigliani render the essential feeling, the 
spirit of negro art and give it force in a new setting. 

The attempt to use sculptural motifs or suggestions in paint- 
ing may be quite unsuccessful, or may produce an effect entirely 
other than that intended, as in cubism. Cubistic pictures, far 
from possessing any of the characteristics which the word 
“cubistic’’ would properly imply, go to the other extreme of 
utter flatness. The great success of Lipchitz in applying the 
cubistic principles to sculpture suggests that the peculiar type 
of emphasis of selected planes, advocated by Picasso, Braque, 
and their followers, is a valid procedure in its proper sphere, 
however much of a fiasco it has been in painting. When sug- 
gestions supplied by sculpture are employed with due consid- 
eration for real and fundamental problems of painting, especially 
with an eye to the possibilities of color, as in the work of Soutine, 
the result is a very moving plastic form of which nothing in the 
previous history of painting is an anticipation. 


CHARA Rail 


CONTEMPORARY PAINTING 


In 1904 a group of Cézanne’s followers established in Paris 
the Salon d’Automne and stimulated a public interest which has 
relegated academic painting to an insignificant place in culti- 
vated French life. A second and more liberal salon, the Indé- 
pendents, which was started a few years later, showed other 
important influences besides those of Cézanne. A third, the Salon 
des Tuileries, still more comprehensive in its influences, had its 
first successful exhibition last year. These three salons have 
determined all that is vital and important in contemporary 
painting throughout the world. 

What interested the insurgents of twenty years ago was 
Cézanne’s development of a form that had freed itself to an 
unheard-of extent from the expressive values of subject-matter. 
The foundation of his form was the impressionists’ practice of 
using color regardless of the natural tones of the objects por- 
trayed: color combined with light was distributed all over the 
canvas so that a homogenous color-mass replaced the old-fash- 
ioned representation of foreground, middle-distance and back- 
ground. The method resulted in flat painting and made color 
function in tying the compositional units together into an 
organic whole. It achieved, by a different method, an approach 
to the color-power which only a few great artists of the past, 
the Venetians, Rubens, Poussin, Delacroix, had possessed. 

Cézanne’s treatment of subject-matter led some of his follow- 
ers to believe that painting could be purified and refined into 
abstract forms by abolishing the representation of natural 
objects. Picasso went to the extreme of conceiving objects as 
a series of planes and he painted these planes so that only sec- 
tions of objects were visible in angular and cubic shapes. The 
practice spread rapidly and was defended by a system of absurd 
psychological and metaphysical doctrines that impressed unre- 
flecting painters and critics. A clever London newspaper-writer, 


CONTEMPORARY PAINTING 313 


Mr. Clive Bell, surrounded the cubists’ doctrine with a quasi- 
scientific set of high-sounding but meaningless statements in a 
book that served its propagandic purpose in good journalistic 
fashion. Mr. Bell’s successful coup in thus giving currency to 
counterfeit thinking and counterfeit art was a circus perform- 
ance which the late P. T. Barnum would have respected. 

In 1913 cubism invaded America through the Armory Exhi- 
bition in New York. Its advent was brilliant in the sense of 
Goethe’s remark that ‘there is no great art in being brilliant, 
if one respects nothing.’ It was a promoter’s adventure backed 
by organized capital and the usual staff of salaried propagandists 
and press-agents. Its intrinsic capital consisted of the fact that 
the paintings offered a fresh, vivid impression in the name of 
art, at a time when creation was at its lowest level. The com- 
bination of circumstances influenced most of the young and a 
number of the older unstable painters to the extent that cubism 
in various degrees of purity flourished in independent exhibitions 
for a number of years. The American academician, Arthur B. 
Davies, preached the doctrine and helped to popularize it by 
adding angles and cubes to his regular formula for Botticelli- 
like nudes. The practical result was that a new academy, cub- 
ism, supplanted the one which the impressionists had maintained 
for the previous twenty years. 

Sufficient time has passed to view cubism in retrospect and 
to evaluate it as an art-form and as an influence. Picasso and 
Braque put considerable aesthetic power into cubistic paintings, 
but it is doubtful if that power is not due to something inde- 
pendent of both the principles and the technique. The idea of 
abstract form divorced from a clue, however vague, of its repre- 
sentative equivalent in the real world, is sheer nonsense. In 
cubistic paintings that move us aesthetically there is always 
sufficient representative indications, as well as reliance upon 
other and traditional resources of painting, to stir up something 
familiar in our mass of funded experience. In these cases, the 
cubist technique functions psychologically precisely as do the 
distortions of El Greco, Renoir and Cézanne; that is, the repre- 
sentative element in all of those distortions contributes to the 
total effect. The nearest a purely cubist painting ever gets to 
the aesthetic forms that make up a complete painting, is good 
composition and novel color-forms, and those elements are never 
sufficient to constitute a satisfactory painting. The very great 

P4b. 


314 CONTE MiP GRAVE AC Nee bance 


majority of cubistic paintings have no more aesthetic significance 
than the pleasing pattern in an Oriental rug. 

A more important and constructive influence that came from 
the insurgent group in France is that of Matisse. He was never 
tempted to seek the metaphysical abstract that led Picasso out 
of the paths of the great traditions of painting. Matisse, like 
Cézanne, has always been interested in the real world as the 
source of a plastic instrument that would enable him to recom- 
bine selected aspects or phases of human experience into a 
form which was something new, a thing in itself, with its own 
independent existence. He began with using certain technical 
devices, notably distortions, which Cézanne invented, and he 
carried them to further extremes in making them constructive 
factors in a new design. Subject-matter was minimized: it was 
merely the foundation stone upon which to build lines of extra- 
ordinary plastic power, and color of unusual compositional 
significance. In other words, Matisse followed Renoir’s and 
Cézanne’s practice in creating plastic forms of structural integ- 
rity. Where Picasso abstracted an element in a situation, 
Matisse dealt with the whole situation as it exists in reality. 
The error in Picasso’s cubistic excursions is that he ignores the 
fundamental psychological fact that continuity is the essential 
feature of perception. It is as absurd to say that planes or 
sections or cubes represent the reality of objects as—to quote 
an observation of William James—to contend that our percep- 
tion of a river is of spoonfuls or bucketfuls of water. In short, 
Picasso dealt with irrational abstractions that led him into a 
cul de sac, while Matisse dealt with concrete realities that expand 
continually into unlimited fields. 

The tendency in present-day painting is away from the 
abstract and toward the utilization of situations of every-day 
life as a means of individual expression of universal human 
values. The impressionism of Claude Monet is scarcely in 
evidence, but the influences of Renoir, Cézanne, Gauguin, 
Van Gogh and Matisse, all of whom had their origins in impres- 
sionism, are almost universal in one or more of their phases. 
To these influences have been added the decorations and dis- 
tortions found in the arts of India and Persia, and especially in 
negro sculpture. Certain practices of cubism, for example, the 
interpenetration and accentuation of planes, have been generalized 
in the new manner of emphasizing spatial relations of natural- 


CONTEMPORARY PAINTING 315 


istic objects in the composition. The primitive element which 
le Douanier Rousseau adapted to new ends is also apparent in 
the work of some of the contemporaries. These various influ- 
ences have determined the exotic, the distorted, the primitive 
effects which have stirred the wrath of our fetish-worshipping 
academicians. What they have urged against contemporary 
paintings is duplicated in every essential point in what their 
prototypes of 1875 published about many paintings now con- 
sidered to be among the best in the Louvre. 

The canvases of the contemporary painters are filled with 
units actively constructive in the general design, and all the 
plastic elements are distorted for obviously specific purposes.. 
The fresh and bright colors which cubism tabooed are almost 
universal, though there is little or no literal rendering of the 
natural colors of objects. Color, distributed all over the can- 
vas, composes the painting; it replaces foreground, middle- 
distance and background with a homogenous color-mass that 
makes perspective itself chiefly color. The general tendency 
is to sacrifice everything toward the achievement of design. 
Decoration is rampant and so are obvious human values, as is 
inevitable when painting is expressive and when its subject- 
matter is the objects and events of the real world. Nothing 
of the importance or significance of Renoir or Cézanne has 
appeared, although several men have shown a form in process 
of development that may reach the importance and strength 
of the best of Picasso and Matisse. In the limited space of this 
book, only a few of the many good contemporary painters can 
be mentioned. An attempt will be made, therefore, to select 
for discussion some of the artists whose work may be consid- 
ered as representative of the tendencies that make up the new 
tradition. 


CHA PTE RAT 


MATISSE 


MATISSE derives from the impressionists but he has so far 
departed from both their technique and their effects that he 
may be considered as in a class apart. His work is a continua- 
tion of the Cézanne tradition that the fundamental plastic 
value is design, irrespective of naturalistic rendering of subject- 
matter. This fact is the key to an understanding of his work, 
which may be best approached by considering how he departed 
from Cézanne’s form. 

His earlier work shows the technique of the impressionists in 
the juxtaposition of small spots of color, but afterward he 
depended more upon the contrasts of broad color-areas some- 
what similar to those in Gauguin’s latest work. Matisse’s color 
has an exotic, non-naturalistic character that distinguishes all 
his mature work. His reds, greens, blues, oranges, may appear 
garish or strident when looked at in isolation, but as he relates 
them to each other, there emerge new and distinct color-forms 
which reveal him as one of the greatest colorists. To under- 
stand and appreciate him it is necessary to study the develop- 
ment of his forms through the medium of his technique. 

Examples of his early painting show an application of color in 
spots predominantly small but differing in size, shape and direc- 
tion, with only vague indications of subject-matter. (Analyses, 
pages 504 to 508.) The method is highly successful in giving 
the effect of rugged and original solidity to objects, and in 
making a design of aesthetically moving color-relations. The 
novelty, variety and power of these color-relations are the key- 
stone of the design, but by no means its only characteristics; 
the other elements, line, modelling, space, etc., enter into the 
design, though all of them, except line, are rather a setting than 
of fundamental importance. These relations form rhythms 
which enter into the composition, serve as an indication of per- 
spective, and are united with lines of a wavy character, greatly 
varied in size, shape and direction, to make a series of designs 





Negro—Sixteenth Century Egyptian—2000 B.C. 
Barnes Foundation 


Design realized by distortions from naturalistic appearance. 


(317) 





Persian Miniature—Sixteenth Century 
Barnes Foundation 


Shows distortion of perspective to achieve design. 


( 318 ) 





Matisse Barnes Foundation 


Similar to Persian in the use of perspective. 


Analysis, page 506 


(319) 


“4 
4 
q 
{ 





Barnes Foundation 


BEAT Peles te Rak 


within designs. Everything is so abstract that it is often 
impossible to determine the precise nature of subject-matter, or 
to say whether there is perspective in the sense of infinite depth 
or whether there is a screen just back of the objects in the fore- 
ground. But in all cases the quality of the colors and their 
relations to line and space make a very effective plastic form. 

Cézanne’s influence was the dominant one in Matisse’s re- 
searches in color and in the achievement of design. (Analysis, 
page 504, Landscape No. 73.) Distortions reminiscent of Cézanne 
appear in the rendering of every object, but there are so many 
modifications in detail that the form is characteristically that 
of Matisse. The direction of change is towards a greater direct 
reliance on color-relations. In Cézanne the color is used much. 
more to create an effect of solidity and spatial depth, while with 
Matisse the immediate quality of the color and the relations 
between the colors are of more primary interest. The essential 
difference may be said to be that in Matisse the raw material of 
color goes through a less extensive process of reorganization 
before it enters into the final form of the picture, while in Cézanne 
the harmonies of color are utilized primarily to give the effect of 
solidity and rather precisely defined three-dimensional spatial 
relations. In Matisse all such relations, and the effects of mass 
and line in general, are used to heighten the immediate color- 
relations. Both sets of elements are present in both painters, 
but what is secondary in Matisse is primary in Cézanne and 
vice versa. The essentially novel character of Matisse appears 
in these very varied rhythms of color, into which enter tints 
and hues that are to be found in no other painter. Their bril- 
liance and the daring of the contrasts strike the unfamiliar 
observer as harsh and unpleasant; but intelligent familiarity 
transforms this impression into the recognition of a new form 
of abstract power, achieved immediately through the use of 
color. 

His line functions with extraordinary power: even in his black- 
and-white drawings, the line is simplified away from its function 
of defining contours and enters into relations with other and 
conjoined simplified lines to make a unit of great plastic value. 
In other words, his line is negligible as contour but highly impor- 
tant in giving plastic value to what is contained between the 
contours of figures and objects. It is somewhat akin to that of 
Cézanne and shows the same rugged character, is heavy and 


322 CONTEMPORARY, PAINTING 


wavy, and is always either made of color or obviously related 
formally to color. It is without the psychological expressiveness 
of that of Degas or Picasso, and is always distorted out of any 
resemblance to the actual outlines of the subjects drawn. 

Light is likewise handled to secure results purely plastic. It 
is used subtly, never naturalistically, and in general in subordi- 
nation to the purpose of setting off and arranging the colors 
themselves. It is merged into the general fluid, rhythmic qual- 
ity of the form. A human figure is rendered either flat or with 
three-dimensional reality according to the exigencies of design. 
Spatial quality is only present in a degree sufficient to guard 
against unreality, and its chief function is to make more varied 
and effective the color-rhythms which are the basis of the design. 
The compositional arrangement of the masses is always free 
from any rigidity or fixity; it is without any central mass, so 
that rhythm flows from one part of the canvas to another in 
accord with the flow of color, with which it harmonizes in its 
infinite variety of forms. 

In his ‘‘ Joie de Vivre’”’ (Analysis, page 505), the most impor- 
tant of his early paintings, we see all these qualities, plus a 
strongly marked influence of the Persians and Hindus. The 
general effect is that of flat decoration, but there is no flabbiness 
of structure because of the great number of plastic relations 
established between all the elements employed. The color-motif 
serves as a central dominating principle, and the other relation- 
ships, line, mass, space, are present in the degree required by 
the demands of the color-form, so that the whole effect is one 
of conviction and reality. The color-form, in other words, is 
not an isolated effect but a fine adjustment between color and 
sufficient massiveness, spatial character, line, etc., to assure the 
reality of the forms created. 

Cubism had only a slight influence upon Matisse. From it he 
derived possibly a slight impetus to the analysis of objects into 
their constituent planes, but his primary interest in color was 
not impaired. The chief influence was more subtle, and is to be 
seen primarily in the tendency to make a more extensive use of 
horizontal, vertical and oblique lines in the formation of his 
design, and to diversify his palette with blacks and grays of 
various shades. 

‘The development of Matisse has been a continuous process 
marked by his constantly increasing control over his means. 


MATISSE 323 


Design becomes more and more paramount, chiefly through dis- 
tortions of all the plastic elements, color, line, perspective. 
Color becomes more pleasing sensuously, enters into more 
daring contrasts, more firmly knits the composition together, 
and its exotic quality recedes before the feeling of abstract 
color-power. Modelling appears in a more varied form—light 
and shadow as well as color play a part in it, though always in 
subordination to the motive of rhythmic color-contrasts. This 
same departure from naturalistic representation is seen in a 
distortion of perspective similar to that practiced by the Persians 
and Japanese and sometimes by Fra Filippo Lippi, by which 
distant objects are placed towards the top of the canvas. This 
act of violence to literal reproduction greatly enhances the value 
of the design. Figures become more and more definitely plastic 
units: sometimes they resemble negro masks, sometimes sculp- 
tural Hindu figures of the Third Century. The heavy, ragged 
line is often so freed from its ordinary function of fixing the 
contours of a body as a whole that the head, hands, breasts, etc., 
seem to be detached from the trunk. 

These developments are seen in his large painting, ‘‘La Lecon 
de Musique,” painted about 1920 (Analysis, page 506), which 
represents his form at the highest state of perfection. All 
the possibilities hinted at in his extremely simple ‘‘Joie de 
Vivre,” painted about 1910, are realized in the infinitely com- 
plex “‘La Lecon de Musique.’’ The relation between the two 
paintings is interesting as representing an intelligent, purposeful, 
consistent development of an artistic form to a degree of com- 
pleteness in realization that is without a parallel in contempo- 
rary painting. 

Matisse may be summed up by saying that above all other 
painters he represents the interest in the interplay of color-forms 
for their own sake. This interest is comparatively abstract, 
and consequently it necessitates far-reaching distortions of every 
plastic element, including renunciation of color-values used 
naturalistically. The basic principle of his art is that of rhythmic 
contrasts, and especially color-contrasts, but these are ballasted 
and heightened by effects of line, space and mass. Color, applied 
in small areas, combines with line to give the effect of drawing, 
and color-units do a great part of the work in composing the 
picture. He is bold and original in his choice and combina- 
tion of colors, and is unsurpassed in his single-mindedness and 


324 COIN DE MIE O RAR Yaar ACTIN Sele 


consistency in subordinating all other effects to the realization 
of forms that are a successful fusion of all the plastic elements 
through the medium of color. These forms have been made 
steadily more structural throughout the course of his painting, 
so that the element of mere decoration has progressively given 
place to the aspect of form. In this sense Matisse represents 
interest in pure design carried to its highest degree. 

It is inevitable that Matisse should have to pay for this 
form by a loss of sensuous charm and content of deep, universal 
human values. It comes much nearer being a tour de force than 
the forms of the really great men of the past. Compared with 
that of either Renoir or Cézanne his form is weaker because it 
holds in solution fewer values. He has not the artistic impor- 
tance of the greatest painters, but in the use of all the plastic 
means to create a strong and distinctively personal effect he is 
by far the most important painter of our age. 


CRU ATR De Re DM 


PICASSO 


THE obvious contrast between Picasso’s work and that of 
most of the great masters of the past has given the impression 
that he stands outside the familiar traditions of painting. But 
his indebtedness to the traditions of the past, and his ability to 
give them an original setting, are clearly evident in his work of 
all periods. 

In his earliest paintings, the influences most apparent are 
those of Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec. From them he took 
over the expressive character of line, quality of color and its man- 
ner of application, and the obvious illustrative subject-matter 
in which psychological expression predominates. The effects 
in Picasso’s work of what is known as his ‘‘ Blue Period’’ resem- 
ble those of Cézanne, El Greco and of the Fourteenth Century 
Italian, Piero della Francesca. The Piero school-picture in the 
church at Arezzo shows the similarity of Picasso’s general 
expressive use of color, line and light. Like Piero he makes a 
strong and very resourceful use of color, and more particularly 
of a single color. Blue is the foundation of the color-scheme, 
but blue amply varied and modulated with light to give diversi- 
fied color-effects. .This color works through the whole expanse 
of the picture, making direct color-contrasts and aiding in the 
composition and the construction of the masses themselves. It 
is less cool and less dry and more obviously expressive than 
Piero’s blue. Compared with the color of Renoir and Cézanne 
it is lacking both in richness and in moving force; but it is very 
subtle, gives the effect of great economy of means, and is in 
keeping with Picasso’s form, which is weaker than that of the 
greatest artists. Picasso uses this color-scheme as a foundation 
for his experiments in pure design which are obviously closely 
related to Cézanne’s similar interest. In his large painting, 
entitled ‘‘Composition,’’ the distortions as well as their func- 
tions are very clear. The linear quality of these distortions 


23 


326 CONTE MUR O RU RGY EAT Nias 


represents the enduring influence of Degas, plus a greater debt to 
El Greco and Cézanne. With this departure from naturalism 
there is the persistence of Picasso’s accentuated illustrative 
interest, so that his form is never so purely plastic as that of 
Matisse. The colorfulness of the picture also testifies to his 
debt to Cézanne and El Greco. 

His line at this period also shows the influence of El Greco as 
well as of Cézanne: it is distorted to give a heightened psy- 
chological expressiveness, and the use of the line in connection 
with light to give the effect of modelling is also El Grecoesque. 
In the less successful pictures of the Blue Period the separate 
influences noted are more or less perceptible in isolation, but 
in his best work, as represented by the ‘‘Girl with Cigarette”’ 
(Analysis, page 508), they are very well fused into a character- 
istic Picasso form. The subject-matter displays Picasso’s 
marked tendency to expressionism but on the whole the pictures 
of both the Blue and the so-called ‘‘Rose”’ Periods represent a 
successful integration of color, line, modelling, and space-com- 
position, which, though primarily illustrative, is still sufficiently 
plastic to achieve a high degree of conviction. 

In 1907 Picasso became interested in negro sculpture to such 
an extent that his paintings of that period are really a pictorial 
reproduction of the plastic values of that sculpture. This part 
of his work was only fragmentary and transitional, but the 
increased technical resources, in generalized form, remained at 
his command, and paved the way for his later work, in which 
the sculptural forms are more fully assimilated in terms proper 
to painting. 

About 1909 the sculptural influence began to be paramount, 
and naturalistic rendering gave place almost completely to the 
rendering of abstract forms. In his still-lifes of this period, 
several objects are often placed so close together that the whole 
group functions as a single mass. His former suave, curved 
lines have become sharp and heavy, and the objects outlined 
are angular and block-like. The pinks, blues and yellows of his 
earlier work have changed into a sombre combination of slate, 
drab green, and dull brownish-red. These new shapes and colors 
are the distinctive mark of Picasso’s form at that period and 
constituted the point of departure for cubism. 

The roots of cubism can best be seen by an examination of 
the distortions in Cézanne’s work, where a single element or 


PICASSO 327 


aspect of an object is often exaggerated out of all proportion to 
the other elements. This distortion represents an imaginative 
analysis or dissociation of an object into its plastic elements and 
their recombination into a new form differing in appearance from 
the original object, but representing a more adequate embodiment 
of its plastic qualities. All painting which makes any pretense to 
artistic significance involves some measure of this selection and 
emphasis. This principle is precisely the principle of cubism, 
with the difference that in cubism, as in other contemporary 
painting, it is carried much further. Every object in the real 
world, as viewed from various angles, may be regarded as a 
multitude of planes which so melt into one another that their 
three-dimensional significance is largely lost. Cubism is an 
effort to bring this three-dimensional solidity into clear relief by 
abstracting and showing only a certain number of the planes. 
The superficial effect is totally different from that of conventional 
sculptural representations, but the work of Cézanne makes us see 
the two styles as representing a similar intention. In Cézanne, 
there is much more of the direct resemblance to real objects, 
as well as the conviction of solidity, as we have it in Michel 
Angelo; but we have also the distortions produced by the inter- 
penetration of planes at angles departing from the normal, and 
the result is both an increase of conviction and a heightened 
sense of design. 

In Picasso’s cubism, the process is carried to such a degree 
of departure from naturalism that what we see is of little or 
no assistance in enabling us to recognize the object as it exists 
in nature. But that distortion is consistent with the imagina- 
tive purpose of art, providing the new design is more moving 
aesthetically than the old. There is no doubt that such reso- 
lution of an object into its constituent planes does sometimes 
produce a pattern much more interesting than a naturalistic 
rendering could hope to achieve. However, pattern does not by 
itself suffice for the design that constitutes great art. Conse- 
quently, many cubist pictures do not sufficiently anchor the forms 
to anything in the real world to make possible a transfer to 
them of the many echoes and reverberations which objects gain 
by their multiform relationships in ordinary experience. In 
other words, the cubist principle, if carried to its logical con- 
clusion in wholly abstract design, constitutes as much an over- 
accentuation as does Botticelli’s line or Leonardo’s light; that 


328 CON TEM POR MRAP AN GaN G 


is, one of the plastic factors is made to do the work which should 
be done by one or more of the other elements. It is only by the 
merging of all the elements that all the resources of our experi- 
ence can be brought into play to give emotional force to the form 
presented. The appeal of pure cubism is, therefore, due to the 
same psychological factors which are responsible for our pleasure 
in a rug or in a wall-paper. Nevertheless, this fact does not 
prevent the imaginative and resourceful use of the cubistic tech- 
nique from producing pictures of a high degree of aesthetic 
value. In fact, many of Picasso’s cubist paintings achieve this 
value by a harmonious interplay of line, color, and space to 
produce unified design embracing a wide variety of elements. 
If an observer cannot appreciate such paintings, and at the 
same time professes to enjoy the art-values in Titian, Velas- 
quez or Renoir, we are justified in questioning whether he is not 
really deceiving himself. This does not mean that Picasso is 
as great as Titian or Renoir, but only that he has created a 
plastic form the essential value of which is less in degree than. 
theirs but not different in kind. In brief, Picasso’s cubism 
made dominant what was merely a by-product in Cézanne’s 
work, that is, one of the surface effects incidental to the rhythmic 
movements of solid objects in deep space. Picasso’s followers 
attempted to give a rationale of the procedure which, psychologi- 
cally considered, is nonsense and has brought discredit on the 
whole movement. 

After a number of years of preoccupation with the cubistic 
technique, Picasso resumed his interest in painting in which the 
representative element is more in evidence. His line became 
finer and more in the manner of Ingres, though by no means 
an imitation of Ingres’s line. The figures and objects have 
assumed a solidity and block-like effect which constitute decided 
distortions from the naturalistic viewpoint. They have a mon- 
umental sculptural quality that was lacking in his early period, 
and it seems that the influence of negro art, of El Greco and 
Cézanne, have been more or less supplanted by the influences 
of those painters of the Italian Renaissance who were preoccu- 
pied with attaining three-dimensional solidity. He attains a 
definite plastic form of considerable power, but much of this 
work constitutes such an accentuation of heavy voluminal 
masses that it savors strongly of virtuosity. In short, his 
present work, while always of considerable value for its plastic 





Italian—Fifteenth Century Barnes Foundation 


( 329 ) 





Fragonard Louvre 


This painting is similar in point of design to the paintings on the preceding 
and the opposite pages. 


(330) 





Picasso Barnes Foundation 


Analysis, page 508 


331.) 





Picasso Barnes Foundation 


Analysis, page 510 


( 332) 


ECR UO 333. 


form, shows a decided retrogression when compared with the 
balanced use of plastic means in the best of his earlier work. 

Psychologically considered, Picasso’s art represents rather a 
great natural sensitiveness and fertility than a reflective, reso- 
lute and well-directed search for an individual aesthetic con- 
ception. In men like Cézanne, Renoir or Matisse, it is possible 
to see a constant struggle for a form which will express all that 
the artist has to say. This sense of a deeply purposeful effort 
towards a style adequate to carry a profoundly personal and 
original vision is absent in Picasso. It is true that he shows 
advance, but the successive styles seem less cumulative, less like 
stages on the way to a goal which has been foreshadowed all along, 
than they do in Cézanne or Matisse. In this sense, Picasso is 
unreflective, as is shown by the fact that his later work does not 
always show an improvement in the fullness and strength of 
his plastic form. In his latest period, for instance, the Renais- 
sance solidity does not seem a real augmentation of his resources, 
but rather a reversion, since it suggests that a new interest had 
appeared which was in the nature of a distraction rather than of 
a fulfillment of his earlier and more natural interests. In the 
same way, his cubistic paintings are in most respects less satis- 
factory than those of his Blue Period. Such veerings marked 
with partial retrogression suggest an impulsive temperament, 
going off at a tangent from the line of maximum advance rather 
than using every new element of technique to deepen and enrich 
a fundamentally organic grasp of the world of plastic forms. 
Picasso’s sensitiveness and his power to assimilate are far too 
great to allow his unreflectiveness to degenerate into mere imi- 
tativeness or superficiality, but his wavering does make him less 
powerful and original than the men of the first rank. 


CHAI DE Ray 


SOUTINE 


SOUTINE’S paintings are so different in appearance from other 
paintings, and from anything with which we are familiar in the 
real world, that the first effect is likely to be one of utter bewil- 
derment. There is but little clue for their classification in any 
of the traditions, and often they seem to be mere masses of 
thick, brilliantly colored paint, thrown together without rhyme 
or reason. But even with all this bewilderment there is a 
feeling of intense and pervasive power that arrests and holds 
the attention; then we begin to perceive that this apparent 
jumble of strange elements is a design that conveys the feeling 
of power. | 

The most important element in achieving this form is color. 
It is of extraordinarily pleasing sensuous quality, rich, deep, 
juicy, and exists in a great variety of pure colors and their tonal 
variations. It is applied in thick masses, laid on in every con- 
ceivable direction, in areas varying greatly in size, modulated 
and accentuated by means of light, and always in striking 
contrasts. These colors, by their very sensuous quality and 
manner of application, are expressive of intensity. The color 
is reinforced and buttressed by a series of simplifications and 
distortions of all the other plastic elements, which are as original, 
as novel, and as strange as is the general appearance of the 
painting. The simplifications and distortions produce a greater 
departure from the actual appearance of objects and figures than 
do those of Cézanne or Matisse, and often leave only the slightest 
clue to the identity of the objects depicted. For example, what 
has the appearance of a mere broad splash of paint, will, when 
examined closely, be found to represent the front of a house; 
and what looks like the spilling of spots of other colors in this 
broad area will be found to be the representation of a roof, or a 
window; but the wall of the house and the roof and the window 
convey the essential feeling of those structures. The house is 
seen to be leaning at an impossible angle and to be placed in rela- 


SOUTINE 335 


tion to a tree grossly distorted, simplified to bare essentials, 
and rendered in colors which make a brilliant and dramatic 
contrast. Both the house and the tree will be placed against 
a rock or hill similarly distorted, but likewise rendered in their 
essential qualities and enriched with varied colors. Close inspec- 
tion will reveal other areas of rich, deep, contrasting colors that 
represent various other elements of landscape, such as sky, 
paths, bushes, all broadly painted. It will be seen that all these 
various objects in the landscape relate themselves to each other 
to give an ensemble effect that carries the essential quality of 
landscape, impregnated with the abstract feeling of power. 
What at first looked like indiscriminate, pell-mell splotches, is 
now seen to be really an orderly use of color for the purposeful 
achievement of forms that embrace a balanced use of line, space 
and mass. The great variety in the color, the bizarre directions 
of line, and the unusual divisions of space, give rise to a series 
of powerful and stirring rhythms that flow from one end of the 
canvas to the other. These rhythms, greatly diversified in size 
and intensity, render the basic feeling of rhythmic power that is 
to be found in all of his best work. 

His design has the same kind of strength as Tintoretto’s and 
is achieved by very much the same dramatic contrasts of color 
and light which Tintoretto used most strikingly in his depiction 
of skies, and less obviously in other objects. Soutine has 
enriched the contrast motif with more brilliant colors differently 
applied, and has made it one of his chief technical devices. 
The result is that the feeling of intense drama which Tintoretto 
gives in only certain parts of his canvas, pervades the whole 
painting in Soutine. 

His technique shows other influences, notably those of Dau- 
mier, the impressionists, Cézanne, Van Gogh, and especially 
negro sculpture. He derives from the impressionists in the same 
sense that Cézanne does; that is, the basis of his technique is 
the use of color-contrasts in connection with direct sunlight. 
His modification of the technique compares, in originality and 
application to diverse purposes, with the modifications made 
by Renoir, Cézanne and Van Gogh. His painting is nearer to 
Van Gogh’s in general feeling than it is to Renoir’s or Cézanne’s. 
Another kinship with Van Gogh is the comparative surface-qual- 
ity of his effects; that is, they lack codrdinated use of all the 
plastic means to achieve the monumental effects characteristic 


336 CONTEMPORARY PAINTING 


of Cézanne and Renoir. But Soutine’s effects are not merely 
surface decoration: they represent a firm welding of decorative 
and structural elements in the creation of new plastic forms. 
His color-forms are quite as rich in some respects as those of 
Renoir and Cézanne, but he is very much more restricted in his 
ability to use them. He lacks the epic grandeur and majesty 
of Tintoretto, Cézanne, or Renoir, because he has less ability 
to organize voluminal masses in dynamic relations in deep space. 

Soutine’s method of modelling resembles Cézanne’s only in 
that he uses areas of contrasting color in connection with light. 
His color areas are larger, the colors themselves depart further 
from the naturalistic, the brush-strokes are more obvious, and 
there is a deliberate intention to make a color design in itself 
with little reference to the actual appearance of faces or other 
features. To Cézanne’s method he applied modifications of his 
own, and used that technique in depicting faces as well as the 
objects in landscape. ‘The general effect of a figure by Soutine 
is less convincing as regards solidity and reality than one by 
Cézanne; nevertheless, there is a sufficient degree of three- 
dimensional quality to harmonize with the general design. 

Soutine’s distortions are carried toa further departure from natu- 
ralistic representation than those of any of his important prede- 
cessors or contemporaries. A face, hand or other part of the 
body modelled by him, since it is intended to function as a plastic 
unit, is executed technically in about the same way as a textile 
or any object in a landscape. There is, however, a feeling of 
essential reality in a face or hand, plus a note of power and a 
definite color design, all of which are Soutine’s distinct achieve- 
ments. In his rendering of figures is clearly discernible the 
influence of Daumier toward that simplification which tends to 
produce the effect of both the essential feeling of an object, 
and its exaggeration toward the grotesque or monstrous. In 
spite of all this simplification, added color-design, and distortion, 
the character of the sitter appears with strength, reality and 
essential dignity. ) 

His very manner of using these distortions to the achievement 
of design, constitutes one of the important elements that give 
his work originality, interest and strength. He intensifies 
Cézanne’s disturbance of the symmetrical balance of features, 
and he goes further than Matisse in separating parts of the 
body from their adjacent parts. For example, an ear will be 


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SOUTINE 341 


double its natural size and situated with a perceptible area of 
background between the ear and the head. The grotesqueness 
is lost sight of in the plastic quality of the color-form made up 
of the detached ear, the intervening portion of the background, 
and the head itself. An oddly shaped nose will be out of pro- 
portion to the surrounding features, and criss-crossed by large 
brush-strokes of bright and contrasting colors. One shoulder 
will be convex and placed several inches higher than the opposite 
shoulder, which will be as concave as a saddle. The drawing is 
always done by meansof color, and the lines of color which define the 
contours of objects are duplicated or related to similar streaks 
of color in the clothing and the background. Perspective is 
rarely rendered as distance, but is done in the manner of many 
moderns, including Matisse, in which distance is brought for- 
ward and toward the top of the canvas and rendered in terms 
of color. Space is always perceptible in this color-area, but 
perspective itself functions as a color-form in the general design. 

Another influence which has been quite as strong as any of 
the others in making up Soutine’s form, is that of negro sculp- 
ture. In a figure by Soutine there is perceptible the tendency 
to resolve faces and other parts of the body into their respective 
planes in a manner quite similar to that seen in negro sculpture. 
But he modified these distortions and used them to new ends, 
just as he distorted the technical devices of Tintoretto, Cézanne 
and others. A tree, a rock or a house in a landscape will be so 
resolved into planes that the object assumes the shape of an 
arm, leg, shoulder, or face which has the feeling characteristic 
of negro art. His use of that influence is much more success- 
ful than Picasso’s isolated and fragmentary employment of it. 
With the same means, Soutine merges the dynamic feeling of 
negro sculpture with other great traditions, and constructs forms. 
-that are definite plastic creations unified into a new organic 
whole. 

The essential characteristic of Soutine’s work is a succession 
of powerful rhythms. He is comparable to the greatest painters 
in his use of an infinite variety of rhythms, and in their effect 
in conveying the feeling of abstract power. He has great skill 
in adapting these rhythms to various kinds of subject-matter; 
but we feel the essential qualities of those objects, their indi- 
vidual strength, and their relation to each other, in such a way 
that the feeling of strength goes into our actual perception of 


342 CONTEMPORARY) (PAN GDNIG 


the subject-matter. For example, the feeling of power in nature 
is rendered by means of a succession of strong rhythms that 
flow from one object to the other ina landscape. Ina figure, the 
face, the hands, the clothing, constitute a succession of greatly 
varied rhythms that give plastic strength and essential character 
to the subject portrayed. In a still-life, a vase stands at an 
absurd angle in relation to another grotesque vase, each con- 
taining flowers. The rhythms in the vases are of a different size, 
shape, color and direction from those in the flowers, and all the 
rhythms are made up of balanced line, color and space. 

He has succeeded quite as well as any of the contemporary 
painters in achieving a plastic form of originality and power. 
He is in some respects a greater colorist than Matisse, in that 
his color is richer, more juicy and is the principal means of 
achieving a form which is sometimes more powerful than that 
of Matisse. In his best painting there is an organic unity that 
has all the completeness of Matisse’s, plus a power which only 
Tintoretto and Cézanne have achieved. But his work is very 
uneven, and he lacks Matisse’s calm, unruffled, purposeful pur- 
suit of a definite object. Where Matisse is deliberate in his 
intent to organize, Soutine is passionate and impulsive: he lets 
himself go with apparently little concern for his success in 
organizing the picture. The result has been a great number of 
paintings that contain a series of beautifully rendered units 
which remain isolated, unrelated, plastically unorganized. But 
in many pictures, his passion has been sustained long enough to 
weld these units into an organic whole. The means of achieving 
these results is color—rich, fat, juicy color—which is an integral 
part of every unit in the canvas, and which enters into formal 
relations with line and space and ties all of them into a firmly 
knit organic plastic form. That form compares in strength and 
dramatic power with the forms of the great masters of the past. 


CHAPTER VI 
PASCIN 


PASCIN’s achievements in the line of some of the great tradi- 
tions of painting make him one of the most important of con- 
temporary artists. The influences of Daumier, Degas, Cézanne 
and Renoir are seen in his work, but his own contributions con- 
verted them into a distinctively personal form. 

He is one of the great illustrators of all times and as such can 
be classed with Goya, Daumier, Degas and Glackens. Like 
them he conveys the information concerning subject-matter in 
such good plastic terms that his paintings rank as great art. 

The influences of Daumier are seen in figures where the 
features are obliterated by the heavy line, and in the spots of 
color, light and shadow which Daumier used to give a bulky, 
massive, monstrous character to faces and other parts of the 
body. These grotesque or monstrous figures have a vivid reality 
and fidelity all their own. From Cézanne he took over whole 
color-forms and areas together with an attempt at modelling in 
color, as well as his method of distorting features of faces to 
enhance design. From Renoir he absorbed, to a certain extent, 
the lightness and delicacy in the use of similar colors, and also 
a tendency to a wavy, decorative line by which figures and 
objects assume a fluid, graceful, rhythmic character. Similari- 
ties to the techniques of Renoir and Cézanne are seen in his 
attempts to render the movement of volumes of color in deep 
space, and his use of light in patterns that contribute to the 
total design. These various influences are never literally fol- 
lowed, but are so deeply impregnated with Pascin’s own feeling 
that a new form emerges. 

His own contributions consist in drawing all the units of the 
painting with a short and wavy line, so that in any area of his 
canvas there is more movement than in either Renoir or Cézanne. 
These short, wavy lines are reinforced with areas of color and 
light which make active, almost nervous, rhythmic units that 
wave and flow into corresponding units in other parts of the 


344 CONTEMPORARY PAINTING 


canvas. The result is a sort of swirl somewhat akin to that 
of Rubens and Tintoretto, but less powerfully colorful than 
Rubens’s and less solid than Tintoretto’s. This technique of 
Pascin’s gives an exquisite, delicate rendering of the dramatic 
character of the situations represented. 

He ranks with any of the modern or contemporary painters 
in his feeling for the compositional relation of objects to each 
other. He always paints scenes of every-day life, in which every 
object and person depicted departs radically from its natural- 
istic appearance. He practices distortion in regard to all the 
plastic elements, and succeeds in thus creating a new and more 
powerfully moving plastic form. Nothing in his canvas is static: 
if figures are posed to represent rest, they have the feeling of 
actually living the position in which they are placed; if the 
scene represents the figures or other objects in movement, they 
are moving actively. In addition, color, line and space par- 
take of that movement so that there is always a fluid, graceful, 
rhythmic unity in which everything participates. It is his sen- 
sitiveness to the relation of these rhythms to each other in 
volume, size of line, quality of color, and variation in spatial 
intervals, that constitutes the essence of his work and gives it 
its high importance as an art form. This rare feeling for design 
is manifested in whatever subject-matter he depicts. 

Pascin’s works after 1914 show the influence of cubism in 
two ways. First, in a manner anticipated in some of Cézanne’s 
painting, in which angular and rectangular surfaces of color 
give a quite particular effect. This device is used constantly 
in Pascin’s subsequent work, but is so greatly modified and 
adapted to his particular design that new ends are achieved. It 
becomes the motif in many of his paintings, but is more of a 
rhythmic swirl than its counterpart in Cézanne, although there 
is a basic similarity in the interpenetration of color-planes at all 
angles. It is used also in indicating movement of voluminal 
masses in deep space. The second influence of cubism is less 
pronounced: it consists in the block-like character of houses 
and other objects and, sometimes, a tendency to resolve the 
objects depicted into their constituent planes. 

His color owes much of its charm to its delicate, pastel-like 
quality, and his supreme ability to make a minimum of paint 
function importantly as color. This gives to his paintings in 
oil freshness and delicacy, and makes them as fluid and light as 


PASCIN 345 


pastel or water-color. This quality of color and the manner of 
its application on the canvas make his works look less solid, 
more like patterns, and carry less well at a distance, than those 
of Renoir, Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse or Glackens. His lightness 
of modelling contributes to this effect. 

His drawing is as loose, as terse, as varied in expression as 
that of any of the great illustrators. In certain respects, for 
example, in the drawing of a horse, no artist has ever succeeded 
in obtaining convincing reality with such minimum of means. 
He has the vision that is invariably the equipment of a great 
illustrator, and his sensitiveness to the essentials of varied 
aspects of life is extraordinary. His revelation of the qualities 
of objects and episodes in life that give them their emotional 
appeal, reveals not only a penetrating eye but a keen reflective 
mind. He has a fine sense of the picturesque, a sensitiveness to 
rhythms and great power to vivify his canvases with them. 
He lacks the ability to render the profound human values that 
one finds in the great old masters, but he has the intelligence 
to avoid subjects involving those values. He is essentially a 
painter of contemporary life and his wanderings have taken him 
to all parts of the world. What he saw in various countries 
and among people of different states of culture is revealed 
always in terms of the human qualities that are universal. In 
these paintings there is never an attempt to emphasize the nar- 
rative values of subject-matter—they are always subsidiary and 
are merely the means to an end. Pascin has achieved a strong 
plastic form, characterized by a succession of light, delicate, 
graceful rhythms. 


CHARRE Ra LT 


MODIGLIANI 


NEARLY all of Modigliani’s paintings represent single figures 
in which striking results are obtained chiefly by drawing of a 
quite peculiar character and force. His incisive line effects a 
sharp definition of contours, but that function is subsidiary to 
the major one of rendering within the contours a form which is 
truly plastic. In other words, it is not so much the lines that 
move us aesthetically as what they enclose. In this respect, his 
drawing recalls that of some of the best of the early Florentines. 

He was not interested in depicting movement or psychological 
states in the sitter. The effect of his figures is stiff and static, 
and the facial expressions are so uniform that it may be said 
that they are the inevitable result of his method of using the 
various plastic elements. 

His representation of figures follows rather closely the char- 
acteristic oval, elongated faces, and the very long slender necks 
found in negro sculpture. But what strikes the eye at first as 
a too close similarity, disappears with the recognition that the 
negro motif was only a point of departure for the creation of a 
new design. The plastic quality of his line conveys the basic 
feeling of negro art, and we feel his pictures as pure painting of 
a high degree of excellence. His modelling is of a delicate but 
real three-dimensional quality in which there is no effort to 
obtain sculptural solidity. Line more than any other element 
is responsible for this modelling; in fact, even in a black-and- 
white drawing, Modigliani secures a feeling of three-dimensional 
solidity without recourse to the use of obvious shadows. In his 
painted figures the line of the contours works quite as well as 
color and light in rendering the three-dimensional quality. 

His color also functions in a manner quite distinctive. It is 
not the bright, juicy and greatly varied color that one finds in 
Soutine or Matisse, though it is usually rich, delicate and light. 
The character of his line gives a particular plastic quality to the 
colored area between the linear contours, so that color is not 


MODIGLIANI 347 


felt as it is in Ingres as mere filling in of space between lines: 
Modigliani’s color enters into relation with his line and produces 
plastic forms in which the color is thoroughly integrated. In 
modelling faces, he often uses a yellowish-red monochrome that 
gives a rather uniform, general color-value to the face and neck; 
this color distortion is seen to have a formal relation to other 
units in the painting, which contributes to the construction and 
enrichment of design. One finds features depicted by his char- 
acteristic line in combination with spots of single color to repre- 
sent the mouth and eyes, with details omitted. In other words, 
the head is felt plastically and not representatively. 

In the best of his work painted after he had attained his indi- 
vidual expression, for example, in his ‘‘La Jolie Menagére,’’ the 
color-scheme as well as the manner of applying paint is reminis- 
cent of Picasso. He had Picasso’s ability to put beauty into an 
object by means of the very quality of paint. This was a lesson 
taught by Manet and incorporated by most of his important follow- 
ersinto their individualtechniques. Modigliani absorbed Picasso’s 
version of that influence and made it a strong constructive factor. 
Sometimes, as in the ‘‘ Portrait of the Red-headed Woman,” he 
uses Manet’s technique of broad painting modified by a particu- 
lar use of color, so that the result compares favorably with the 
effects obtained by Manet. 

He was considerably influenced by cubism, though not to the 
extent of painting cubistic pictures. The influence is seen, in 
a few paintings, in the sharp division of the surfaces of objects 
into multiple angular and cubic patterns. These patterns give 
an effect of complexity to his surfaces that is in striking contrast 
to the uniformity in pattern and color which we find in most of 
his best work. 

His sense of composition and his utilization of space are of 
high order: the spatial relations between objects always estab- 
lish harmonious compositional effects. His subtle use of space 
as a constructive factor in his general design is seen in the good 
relation between his figures and his backgrounds even when they 
are close together in color-value. The character of the back- 
ground is ingeniously varied by modulations of light and by 
different colors that give a distinctive sensuous appeal to the 
whole painting. Sometimes there are backgrounds of drapery, 
painted in delicate and contrasting colors, that carry the essential 
feeling of textiles, while at other times the figure is placed against 


348 CON TEM PO RAMARWVPACUN Tea 


simple broad masses of uniform color; in both cases, there is a 
rhythmic contrast between the colors in all parts of the back- 
ground, the clothing, and the figure. 

His marvellously effective line is not ostentatiously displayed 
in merely linear play, but is subordinated to the requirements of 
design asa whole. Line, color and space are finely proportioned 
in the construction of individual units, which relate themselves 


to other units in the formation of a very personal and moving 
design. 


Cina PE Rev iat 


OTHER CONTEMPORARIES 


Henri Rousseau (Le Douanier) is not strictly a contempo- 
rary painter, but the vogue of his work began only a short time 
ago. His influence, which during his lifetime was negligible, is 
now in the ascendant. His form is an odd combination of an 
archaic literalism with distortions inspired by that interest in 
design which is the mark of all contemporary painting. It 
unites almost photographically detailed drawing with color that 
is sometimes naturalistic, sometimes untrammelled by any con- 
sideration of accuracy in reproduction. His canvases are packed 
full of masses, arranged in intricate spatial relationships, with 
complete disregard for literary or scientific plausibility. The 
result is a strange, naive, exotic quality of great appeal. Such is 
his command of space that his congregated masses never get in 
each other’s way or encroach on each other’s room, and the 
intervals between them are so varied as to create a rhythmic, 
melodious spatial symphony. With this solid structure of plas- 
tic essentials the exaggerations in size of many of his figures, 
and the fantastic distortion of their color, combine to make a 
naive but personal and very effective design. His pictures have 
the charm of a child’s fairy-tale, but there is nothing childish 
or untutored in the skill with which they are executed. 


Utrillo has a very personal expression which reveals his deli- 
cate sense of the picturesque, his ability to portray it in dis- 
tinctive color-forms, and a feeling for quality of paint that has 
rarely been excelled. He renders the spirit of place with the 
sensitiveness, delicacy and lyric charm that one finds in the best 
work of Corot and Renoir. His use of architectural features 
related harmoniously to each other in space and bathed in 
an atmosphere of crystal clarity is reminiscent of the Corots of 
the Italian period. In his painting of figures and houses there 
is also the suggestion of Corot and of the impressionists’ method 
of using light and color. 

25 


350 CON TE MPO (RiAIRw versa ING NGS 


Most of his work represents street scenes or landscapes in 
which details are often painted with considerable fidelity to 
naturalistic appearance, but with the broadening inevitable in 
the use of the impressionistic technique. The literalness of 
subject-matter is completely submerged in the powerful aesthetic 
feeling of design, the successful merging of color, line and 
space. Perspective is rendered almost literally, and seems to be 
merely the means to show finely harmonious spatial relations 
between objects as they move from the foreground into the 
remoteness of infinity. This feeling of infinity Utrillo achieves 
with a rare degree of success by a subtle utilization of space and 
color. 

His distinctive color-form is achieved by the sensuous quality 
of bright, rich and deep color applied in a manner resembling 
Manet’s, which gives a feeling of exquisite choiceness to surfaces. 
The foundation of this color-scheme is a rich ivory, modulated 
by delicate blues, pinks and greens of great sensuous charm. 
Upon this foundation are laid broad areas of bright color and a 
series of linear patterns varied in size, direction, and degree of 
lighting, and enhanced in aesthetic value by the harmonious 
spatial relations between them. 

Like all really great painters, Utrillo had the ability to put 
quality into every square inch of his canvas. When even a 
very small area is inspected closely, the harmonious fusion of 
light, line and color gives the feeling of a delicate, rich porcelain 
that owes much of its surface beauty to the accidents of firing. 
This shows a command of the medium of paint that has rarely 
been excelled. His work is characterized by a rich, glowing 
delicacy and poetic charm. 


Rouault is primarily a draughtsman, but the plastic quality 
of his line, his ability to use it in the construction of design, 
make him one of the most original of contemporary painters. 

He carried further the Daumier tradition of simplified figures 
and objects. His line is broader than Daumier’s, is used more 
economically in the definition of contours, and its expressive 
character is more reinforced by juxtaposition with color. Instead 
of reserving line as did Daumier to emphasize expression, he 
makes a line which only partially defines a contour, goes off at 
a tangent, and meets other lines used in the same manner. He 
thus forms a swirl which is effective as indicating sufficiently the 


OTHER CONTEMPORARIES 351 


outlines of an object, but which gets an added effect in forming 
a pattern in various parts of an object or figure in which there 
are no contours. The line representing the contour is sometimes 
quite as wide as the colored area representing surfaces; and 
these two color-areas are often placed in relation to a spot of 
bare canvas which defines a contour by its juxtaposition with 
another broad color-area which seems to represent nothing but 
background. The result is a strong and very moving plastic 
form made up of color, swirling line and colored background. 

The plastic quality of his line is so great that a face or a feature 
becomes a vivid, living form even when its contours are indicated 
by only a simple, brief, apparently meaningless streak of line. 
Other lines enter into relations with the ones that indicate con- 
tours and create new forms of overwhelming reality and force. 
The principle in operation in his drawing is the breaking up of 
the line of the contours of objects into a number of parts, the 
elimination of most of those parts, and the combination of the 
remaining ones to the creation of a new form. This principle 
has been followed, in lesser degree, by many great artists from 
the earliest time. Rouault carried the process much further 
and added to it another, that of making fragments of lines, 
which define contours of objects, enter into formal relations with 
other lines similarly used. He thus heightened aesthetic effect 
by utilizing his abbreviated linear indications to form an inde- 
pendent decorative design. 


Kisling is one of the most versatile and sensitive of contem- 
porary painters, and his work is in line with the best of the old 
and modern traditions. He has a sense for the picturesque, a 
very expressive line, and ability to use paint often equal to that 
of any other contemporary artist. Furthermore, he has a good 
feeling for design. 

His usually sharp and rather hard line is successfully used in a 
variety of ways. In his portraits, it is reminiscent of Ingres in 
its rendering of beautiful linear patterns; also, it recalls Raphael’s 
successful representation of both active and poised movement. 
His color has not the depth nor the pleasing sensuous quality of 
Soutine’s, nor is it used with Matisse’s power to organize the 
picture. However, it enters into harmonious but rather slight 
color-forms to which brilliant, glowing light contributes. Color 
is a factor in his rendering of a quite pronounced degree of 


352 CONTEMPORARY PAINTING 


three-dimensional solidity, but one which we feel is rather super- 
ficial, a painted solidity rather than the reality which comes 
from. the structural use of color. It is perhaps the plastic 
quality of line more than color that renders the three-dimen- 
sional feeling; that is, his line in addition to defining contours 
succeeds in conveying plastic quality to what is enclosed between 
the lines. By his successful utilization of space he portrays 
an airyness and spaciousness comparable to that in the old 
masters. In his later work he adopted the cubist practice of 
making surfaces a succession of receding planes very close 
together and with the intervals between them active in deter- 
mining the relations between various objects. Instead of render- 
ing these planes abstractly, as was the practice of the cubists, 
he makes them representative of various naturalistic objects. 
The same control of space is seen in his portraits where the 
backgrounds are sometimes represented as mere screens of 
variegated colors and at other times carry the effect of infinity. 
At various stages of his career he has been influenced by a 
number of painters, especially by Renoir, Cézanne, Picasso and 
Rousseau. He sometimes takes over whole forms with very 
little modification; these forms are not used in a strictly imita- 
tive sense but are merged in a design that bears the mark of his 
own personality. 


Demuth works mostly in water-color and his command of that 
medium is equal to that of any other contemporary painter. 

His early work is chiefly illustrative. In it, the essence of 
the situation is portrayed in a vivid, personal manner, in a 
strong design. The foundation of that design is a repetition 
of plastic units constituted by figures and objects, against 
backgrounds of contrasting color-areas; the result is a succes- 
sion of rhythmic’color-units related to each other in a harmonious 
ensemble. His line is sensitively expressive both of movement 
and psychological states, he has a fine feeling for sensuous 
quality of color, and the ability to make color function in knit- 
ting the picture together. Like many of the moderns he empha- 
sizes the planes in a picture, and he has such control over his 
medium that the planes themselves, and the intervals between 
them, function as bright and charming color-forms. 

In his later work the representative elements in subject-matter 
are simplified and distorted by his own adaptations of the 


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OTHE RAGONT Me PORAR TES 357 


cubistic technique, with, however, sufficient representation to 
indicate the identity of the subject portrayed. In his planes 
the bright, delicate and varied colors are strongly modulated 
with light, and there are perceptible separate designs made up 
of each of the elements—of the planes, of the color, of the light, 
and of the spatial intervals. These designs unify into a total 
design that is comparable in plastic strength to the best cubist 
pictures of Picasso and Braque. His method of using inter- 
penetrating planes and angular and cubic surface patterns is 
similar to Cézanne’s, but the resulting forms are slighter. His 
paintings of all periods consist of a series of rhythms of light, 
line, color and space, which have a delicate, fluid charm. 


Lotiron has obtained, by means that are essentially modern, 
a considerable degree of the plastic values found in the best of 
the early Dutch, Italian and French painting. The principle of 
his design is a rendering of successive planes moving from the 
foreground into deep space, and a putting in those planes of 
objects that have formal relations with all the other objects. 
He thus achieves a balanced, well-proportioned, strong compo- 
sition. The effect of his abstract design is at times reminiscent 
of Titian, of Poussin, of the early Dutch landscape and genre- 
painters, and of Pissarro. Although his methods are totally 
different from theirs, there is a feeling of basic similarity in the 
functional values of his line, color, and space. 

His technique derives from that of the impressionists, especially 
Manet and Pissarro, with greater simplicity in the method of 
applying paint, the use of light, and the function of color. His 
employment of light is generally subtle, although at times he 
floods his canvas with sunlight in the impressionistic manner. 
His drawing, by means of color used sometimes in rather ragged 
areas and sometimes with linear incisiveness, is successful in 
portraying both active movement and the static quality seen in 
Millet’s figures. His color is totally different from that of the 
impressionists in its quality and its relation to light, and he 
depends less upon the sensuous quality of color than its relation 
to other colors. Space is subtly rendered and enters into har- 
monious relations with his color-forms to establish compositional 
units of a high grade. It is the successful relation of these 
compositional units to each other that Bice his pictures their 
particular value. | 


358 CONTEMPORARY PAD NGI 


While Lotiron has a definite style, his technique is not employed 
mechanically. His use of line, color, and space is varied to suit 
particular situations, to render the spirit of place, and it is this 
successful adaptation of means to specific ends that makes his 
paintings appeal independently of subject-matter. 


Derain is one of the cleverest eclectics of all time. His exten- 
sive familiarity with the history of painting and his command 
over the medium of paint have enabled him to grasp and portray 
the characteristics of the work of many important artists; but 
what he has accomplished remains a set of isolated devices, purely 
mechanical tricks, never informed by any essential vision of his 
own, and not fused into a personal and distinctive style. He is 
like the popular lecturer or sermonizer who can give to his dis- 
courses a flavor of culture or profundity by quotations out of 
every book in literature, but whose borrowed ideas and rhetorical 
flourishes have no more inner coherence than the fragments in 
an encyclopedia of quotations. 

The foundation of his effects is usually the smooth, textile-like, 
rich beauty that Chardin, Daumier, and Cézanne gave to sur- 
faces by the sheer quality of superb painting; but in Derain these 
surface effects are unsupported by any purpose or ideas that 
make real creation. He has no real feeling for color: its sensu- 
ous quality is indifferent, and the color-relations are either 
conventional or directly imitative of some other painter. Yet 
he has a real pictorial sense. His backgrounds and figures are 
well codrdinated, the composition is orderly and his work is 
never that of a bungler. When a subject interests him, his 
treatment of it, by other men’s methods, is effective throughout 
even though it shows no real personal grasp of essentials. The 
majority of his portraits done on order are perfunctory exhibi- 
tions of virtuosity, destitute of aesthetic feeling. 

Upon the foundation of the appealing Daumier-Cézanne-like 
surfaces, all kinds of imitations of other painters are grafted 
without search for an individual creation of his own. He imi- 
tates whoever may have caught his attention at the moment. 
Some of his heads are like Giotto’s, with loose, fluent painting, 
a luminous quality, and even an able imitation of the effects of 
time; other heads are in the manner of Bronzino, with a few 
strokes of flat color in contrast, that reproduce even the feeling 
which the cracks and the patine of great age have given to the 


WrneRt CONTEMPORARIES 359 


old masters; all, however, have a cheapness akin to that of 
Greuze. In a portrait, a synthesis of Bronzino, Corot, and 
Courbet will produce a striking impression until one observes 
that the head has the feeling of papier-mdché and that the face 
is like a mask. In another figure-piece, the arms, the crossed 
hands, and the folds of the dress are in the El Greco-Cézanne 
style but the actual feeling is missing and the quality of the 
whole painting is that of a still-life. In a Chardin-like still-life, 
for instance, a dish with fruit, vegetables, and bread, the whole 
effect is hard and metallic, yet lustrous withal; it shows that 
Derain can imitate other painters’ handling of paint, but not 
their grasp or understanding of the thing painted. He can 
paint a nude like Renoir, but never the nuances which give the 
Renoir a poetic charm; he can paint textures that look like those 
of Cézanne, but minus the reality and conviction. In short, 
Derain has on tap a store of knowledge of all painting which he 
draws upon as whim or the exigencies of the moment dictate, 
but without personal feeling or inspiration Flower-pieces like 
those of Fantin-Latour and Hans Thoma, heads like those of 
Ingres or of Degas in his early period, pervasive echoes of Matisse 
and Picasso—all these show Derain’s superb craftsmanship, as 
well as his archaeological lore and his contact with contempora- 
neous movements. The absence in all of them of anything 
distinctive, any advance upon the model copied, reveal his 
essential artistic non-entity. All painters owe a debt to their 
predecessors, but a real artist adds something of his own to 
what he borrows. When the note of Cézanne creeps into or 
dominates a picture by Pascin, the painting always remains a 
Pascin, in color, composition, drawing and feeling: it is never 
a bogus Cézanne. Derain has nothing of his own to put into a 
picture; he can paint an imitation of anyone, but with the 
essential, indefinable feeling which confers individuality and 
authentic artistic status left out. His great technical skill is 
not an instrument of expression, but a veneer concealing an inner 
vacuum. He is to our age what the Carracci were to the Italian 
Renaissance. 


Chirico’s design is attained by modifications of old and new 
traditions. His massive architectural elements in composition 
are reminiscent of Masaccio, but their linear quality is empha- 
sized. He accentuates both the linear and the three-dimensional 


360 CONTEMPORARY PA UN TNS 


qualities of objects and figures, emphasizes space, and uses 
strange and extensive distortions. Broad uniform areas of color 
enter into harmonious relations with each other and with designs 
made up of equally broad areas of accentuated light and shadow. 
The relation between the separate designs made up of color, 
light and shadow, and the linear elements representing subject- 
matter, constitute his plastic form. An added note in the 
design is the exotic quality of the color, which gives a mystic 
feeling such as one finds in El Greco. The design is strength- 
ened by his fine feeling for the compositional relations of masses 
to each other, and by his ability both to emphasize space and 
to make the spatial relations between compositional units an 
element of great power. His paintings are good plastic equiva- 
lents of mystical poetry. 


Segonzac’s paintings owe their value to a simplification of 
the technique of Cézanne’s early work done under the influences 
of Courbet and Manet, and its adaptation to traditions that 
followed it. He used Cézanne’s manner of drawing by means 
of color, accentuated Manet’s method of broad painting, and 
used colors of the quality and dark shades characteristic of 
Courbet. To these older traditions, Segonzac applied the 
cubist practice of making constituent planes vividly perceptible 
in space. He selected a few of these planes for emphasis, 
treated them broadly in areas of rather uniform dark color and 
combined them into new forms. His color is almost always 
dark, but each tone has such depth and richness that we do 


not miss the brilliance found in most of the moderns. The © 


foundation of his form is the contrast between broad areas of 
dark colors placed in relation to figures or objects rendered in 
varying degrees of yellowish-ivory-white, painted in a broad 
and simple manner and with almost sculptural thickness. The 
extreme simplicity, the economy of means, the deep color, and 
the vigorous painting, endow his work with novelty and consider- 
able power. 


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(361) 


26 





Chinese—Twelfth Century Barnes Foundation 


( 362 ) 





Demuth Barnes Foundation 


Similar in plastic form to the Chinese painting on opposite page. 


( 363 ) 


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( 364 ) 


APPENDIX 





I 


METHOD AND DESIGN 


THE purpose of this book has been to set forth a method of 
looking at the essentially pictorial or plastic qualities in paint- 
ings, and of judging them by those qualities. We may conclude 
with a summary of the points in which it differs from the methods 
usually employed, and with examples of the specific applica- 
tion of our method to the work of some of the more important 
painters. 

It is obvious that no method can be applied without experi- 
ence and reflection, and that neither experience nor reflection 
is possible without method: the two elements in the situation 
are inseparable. The untrained observer of paintings does 
bring to them a method of observation, but it is the method of 
practical life, and that usually leads to the interpretation of 
pictures as what may be called congealed narrative. Mr. Clive 
Bell’s book Art consists of a long-winded castigation of such 
interpretation, in favor of what he calls ‘‘significant form;’’ how- 
ever, “‘significant form”’ is never defined or analyzed, so that at 
the end of what amounts to an indefinite series of ‘‘don’ts”’ his 
reader is left totally at a loss for guidance as to what to look 
for. But, as Professor Dewey points out, intelligence means the 
use of definite ideas for the interpretation of experience, and 
this is as true of intelligent observation as of intelligent action. 

The academician merely replaces the error of reading stories 
into pictures by the error of applying to them a set of technical 
dogmas, which substitutes mechanical rule for intelligent judg- 
ment. He speaks of color, of composition, of drawing, of model- 
ling, as though there were set standards for these things, stand- 
ards which can be applied with as little recourse to personal 
feeling as is required to measure a quart of water. The present 
method is an attempt to supplant both the popular and the 
academic error by giving some intimation of how to look for 
plastic or “significant”? form, and the criteria by which to 
judge it when it has been found. 


368 METHOD TAN D DESTIN 


We have seen that plastic form is the synthesis of the plastic 
elements or means—color, light, line, space—in a rhythmic, 
unified whole. It expresses the painter’s vision of some object 
or situation in which human values are realized: hence the first 
requirement of a great painter is that he should have some- 
thing to say; and to have “‘something to say’’ is to have an 
eye for the essential human values that the world reveals. 
Judged by this test, Giotto, Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, 
Michel Angelo, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, El Greco, Rubens, 
Rembrandt, Velasquez, Claude are all great artists. But what 
is essential to great art is that what is said must be something 
individual, for there is no great merit in repeating what some- 
one else has already said. Academic and eclectic painters fail 
to qualify as artists because they are the purveyors of other 
men’sideas. Ofcourse, there are degrees in originality. Raphael 
is inferior to Titian or Rembrandt in the depth or width of his 
individual vision, but he does much more to modify, unify, and 
give personal quality to what he took from other men than, for 
example, the Carracci. Poussin is of something less than first- 
rate individuality, but he was a great artist because of his 
ability to fuse traditions into a form never duplicated in the 
work of any of his predecessors. It is impossible to judge any 
painter without knowing his sources, what he had to work with, 
and consequently in the following analyses such sources will be 
so far as possible indicated. 

What an artist sees in the world that escapes others, is valu- 
able as art only when he has a command of the means by which 
it can be put down. For example, the humanitarian interests 
in Millet, or the scientific interests of Leonardo are not suscep- 
tible of being rendered satisfactorily in plastic terms. In science, 
solid mass is all-important, and color is a superficial aspect 
of things; but in the scale of values which prevails in painting, 
the relative importance of solidity is much less. Leonardo’s 
primary interest was in science; his deficient interest in the 
qualities which lend themselves to a rendering in pictorial terms 
is reflected in his very unequal command of plastic resources, 
by his bad color, overemphasis on light, and dependence upon 
effects adventitious to painting, even semi-literary effects, such 
as the smile in “Mona Lisa.” 

The question of the degree of realization of each element 
which a given plastic form requires is so involved that it needs 


METHOD AND DESIGN 369 


further illustration. The error most readily made is that when 
a particular element is not obviously accentuated in a picture, 
the painter is to be charged with a deficiency init. For instance, 
in Piero della Francesca there is so little attempt to indicate 
movement realistically that the figures seem static, while in 
Rubens or Delacroix, the movement is very obvious; but that 
difference cannot be counted against Piero’s art. Movement of 
a striking character, in a design so essentially detached and 
unemphatic as his, would be an incongruity. The same prin- 
ciple applies to Rembrandt and Monet in the question of color. 
Monet’s canvases have more numerous and brighter colors than 
Rembrandt’s, but Monet is not therefore a greater colorist. 
Rembrandt’s design commits him to a comparatively subdued 
use of color, but it functions so powerfully that the restraint 
effects a stronger unity of design than Monet ever achieved. 
Raphael is sometimes spoken of as the greatest of all masters 
of composition, but that is merely because his effects of group- 
ing are so obvious that they cannot be overlooked. The simple 
composition of Rembrandt’s “‘Unmerciful Servant”’ represents 
a more effective grasp of spatial relationships and their moving 
power than anything in Raphael. The sense of a wide expanse 
would be incongruous in Rembrandt’s design; instead, there is, 
within a small compass, a perfect sense of roominess, with no 
space gone to waste, none without its own interest and value. 
The same principle may be illustrated if we compare Botti- 
celli with Renoir. The elaborate arabesques and linear rhythms 
of Botticelli may seem an element of appeal which is lacking in 
Renoir; but as soon as we consider integration into a total 
form as the touchstone of aesthetic value, we see that Renoir 
was a far greater draughtsman than Botticelli. His expressive 
line, constructed of color and light, fits perfectly into his form 
and gives not only a convincing representation of shape and 
movement, but contributes more to a structural plastic unity. 
The test of the value of any plastic element is always—does 
the means in question absorb our attention, distract us from 
the form as a whole, compete with the other means, or does it 
merge with the other means and heighten their appeal? The 
painter who relies on isolated effects practices virtuosity, and 
that belongs aesthetically with the feats of the prestidigitator 
or juggler. It is only with relation to design that we can judge 
whether any given use of color, line, light, or space is an over- 


370 METHOD CANDIDS [GIN 


accentuation, a piece of virtuosity, or a legitimate, convincing 
achievement of reality. 

Furthermore, one of the most important factors in a painting 
—that of subsidiary designs—can be appreciated only through 
the recognition of the function of design as a whole. It is uni- 
versally agreed that rhythm is one of the most important quali- 
ties in a work of art, but rhythm is much more than a duplica- 
tion of lines or masses. Rhythm at its best appears in the 
duplication of the general design in the parts of the picture. These 
subsidiary designs would be indistinguishable from a multiplic- 
ity of motives so great as to interfere with unity if we did not 
keep in mind their relations to the central or dominating design. 
Titian’s ‘‘Assumption”’ is one of the great triumphs of plastic 
art when considered as an instance of the enrichment of plastic 
form by many subordinate but harmonious forms; however, an 
observer who did not grasp the design as a whole would be 
justified in charging it with being essentially a series of episodes. 
When Mather says of Signorelli’s and Cosimo Rosselli’s frescoes 
in the Sistine Chapel that they are overcrowded, he is guilty of 
this kind of blindness. It is true that there are many figures 
and episodes in these pictures, but they are so merged, through 
intermediate stages, with the total design, that there is no loss 
of unity. Indeed, the highest mastery in art is manifested in 
this capacity to include smaller designs in a single all-embracing 
form. It is impossible to recognize that fact if the elements that 
go to make up a picture are considered in isolation. 

In the course of this book there has been repeated condem- 
nation of both academic pictures and those in which overaccentu- 
ation appears. However, the study of such pictures has a value 
which calls for some discussion. The beginner in appreciation 
is usually confronted with the difficulty that a picture is, plas- 
tically, a chaos in hiseyes. The work which must be done before 
plastic form can be grasped is impossible for him because he 
cannot find what he is to abstract and to consider with relation 
to the form as a whole. Hence, in the work of an academic 
painter like Raphael, the very quality which makes him unsat- 
isfactory as an artist makes him more valuable to the beginner 
than such painters as Velasquez or Renoir, in whom there is 
complete freedom from accentuation. The principle is the same 
as that by which anyone learning to enjoy poetry may be advised 
to read Kipling, in whom the obviousness of everything makes 


METHOD? AND DESIGN 371 


it difficult for the beginner to go astray. After he has developed 
sufficiently to read Keats, he will recognize the cheapness of the 
means by which were attained the effects which he formerly 
found pleasing. 

The same principle should govern the study of the old masters 
and the more modern painters. In the chapter on the Transi- 
tion to Modern Painting we saw that the distinction between the 
two was the liberation of pure design in modern painting. The 
design in a Cézanne, which is pleasing to a connoisseur because 
it is undiluted by anything extraneous, is not necessarily per- 
ceptible and pleasing to a tyro. The very absence of irrelvan- 
cies which makes possible a much greater variety, freshness, 
and originality in design, is likely to be confusing to a beginner. 
The dilution of plastic form, such as we have it in an academic 
painter of the past, for example, in Andrea del Sarto’s ‘‘ Madonna 
of the Harpies,’’ makes possible a more ready abstraction of 
what design there is. Consequently, the process of education 
in painting requires a constant cross-reference between contem- 
porary art and the art of the past. That each reveals the 
significance of the other is true both as regards the actual his- 
torical relationships, and as regards appreciation. We learn to 
see design at its best by seeing it in a more primitive form, and 
when we have seen it at its best, we learn to make the necessary 
discount when irrelevancies obscure it. 

In the analyses which follow, each picture will be considered 
with reference to its design as a whole, and the success with 
which the painter carried out his design to realize a moving and 
convincing plastic form. The use of each of the plastic means 
will be commented on with regard to its integration in the 
form, and not as something which could be judged in indepen- 
dence of such integration. 


II 


ACADEMIC ART CRITICISM 


The academician judges works of art by mechanical standards, 
as something which may be catalogued, pigeon-holed, compared 
with fixed patterns. He isolates the various elements and 
attempts to judge them without reference to the role which 
they play in design or the form of the picture as a whole. In 
other words, the academician’s judgment mistakes the shell for 
the kernel. We have already pointed out instances of such 
judgment and of their inadequacy, but the contrast between 
those methods and the method employed in this book needs to 
be made more definite by further illustration and summary. 

Professor Mather in his ‘‘History of Italian Painting’’ com- 
bines the academician’s error plentifully with the most ele- 
mentary of all mistakes, that of interpreting paintings by their 
subject-matter. In his judgment of Masaccio’s ‘‘St. Peter 
Raising Tabitha,’’ he condemns, as the artist’s afterthought, two 
figures which serve as the central mass and which are really 
essential to the plastic form of the picture. We find a similar 
confusion in his extraordinary discussion of Giorgione’s ‘‘Con- 
cert Champétre,’’ as follows: ‘‘My own reading [of the mean- 
ing of the picture] is merely based on the contrast between the 
rustic and urban lovers, and an intuition that the courtier in 
peering so wistfully at the shepherd is merely seeing himself in 
a former guise. In lassitude, perhaps in satiety, beside a courtly 
mistress who is absent from him in spirit, there rises the vision 
of earlier simpler love and of a devoted shepherdess who once 
piped for him in the shade. The vision rises as he sweeps the 
lute strings in a chord unmarked by the far lovelier mistress at 
the fountain. The golden age of love, like Arcady itself, is ever 
in the past.”’ It would be difficult to find, outside of the writings 
of Elie Faure, or his follower, Walter Pach, anything ‘‘softer”’ 
than that jumble of rhetorical irrelevancies. Another illustra- 
tion of the same sort of criticism is Professor Mather’s com- 
ment on Michel Angelo’s ‘‘Creation of Adam.” ‘“‘It is all noble 


PAO EN Ley ART) CR whGlS M 373 


energy in the figure of God giving life by His touch, all noble 
languor in the relaxed figure of Adam only dimly conscious of 
himself and wistful. There could be no truer or more striking 
illustration of the pessimistic view that life was imposed upon 
the earth and brought sadness with it. The titan form of 
Adam has a singular and enigmatic relaxation. He undergoes 
a gift he has never besought and faces it with something between 
confusion, mistrust and resignation. Perhaps the splendid 
body would have been more at ease, had the soul not been 
added. So in a spirit of Christian pessimism, Michel Angelo 
represents Deity sharing its divine powers with the first man.”’ 
In a similar strain, he also sentimentalizes over Raphael for 
the beauty of his Madonnas, the elevation of his themes, and 
so on. 

The standard implicit in such criticism makes it incumbent 
upon Professor Mather to laud the most incompetent daubs of 
the academic painter or of the peddler of sentimental chromos, 
provided they embody an edifying moral or romantic situation. 
It would make of Turner a far greater painter than Claude, since 
in his pictures there is a much greater wealth of narrative inci- 
dent. The sum total of his references to the plastic qualities 
of the pictures he discusses, occupy scarcely a score of pages in 
his whole book. Even worse is the fact that his conception of 
basic art values are perfunctory efforts to follow a rule which 
would make fixed standards for all paintings, irrespective of 
design. 

Another kind of confusion is exemplified in the writings of Elie 
Faure. His four-volume work on the history of art might with 
propriety be entitled an historical romance in which painters 
and paintings are extensively mentioned. It represents the 
spirit of the romancer and not of the historian; indeed, with 
the history of art the book has nothing to do. Not only is 
what he says irrelevant to its ostensible subject, but, as. may be 
seen from almost any passage taken at random, the long-drawn, 
almost orgiastic, ecstasy of his manner betrays a total sub- 
mergence of intelligence in emotion. This is the worst possible 
preparation for appreciation. A generation ago William James 
observed Faure’s method in process of application, and com- 
mented on it as follows: ‘“‘I remember seeing an English couple 
sit for more than an hour on a piercing February day in the 
Academy in Venice before the celebrated ‘Assumption’ by 


374 ACADEMIC. ART CREEP CS 


Titian; and when I, after being chased from room to room by 
the cold, concluded to get into the sunshine as fast as possible and 
let the pictures go, but before leaving drew reverently near to 
them tolearn with what superior formsof susceptibility they might 
be endowed, all I overheard was the woman’s voice murmuring: 
‘What a deprecatory expression her face wears! What self- 
abnegation! How unworthy she feels of the honor she is receiv- 
ing!’ Their honest hearts had been kept warm all the time by 
a glow of spurious sentiment that would fairly have made old 
Titian sick.’’ (Principles of Psychology, vol. ii, page 471.) 

In short, Mr. Faure seems to suppose that all appreciation 
of art ought to be what, according to Santayana, popular enjoy- 
ment of music usually is, ‘‘a drowsy reverie relieved by nervous 
thrills.” 

The most influential contemporary writer on art is probably 
Mr. Bernard Berenson; his views embody most of the charac- 
teristics of academicism and irrelevant sentimentalism. His 
four volumes on the schools of Italian Art set forth a theory 
of painting ostensibly based upon psychological considerations 
made sufficiently concrete to serve as a guide for judgment. 
As a specimen of the best kind of psychology and of criticism 
of plastic art that the academic tradition has produced, his 
theory will repay attention. 

According to Mr. Berenson, the essentially important qualities 
of paintings are four—tactile values, movement, space-compo- 
sition, and color, though the last is much the least important. 
He says that the purpose of art is life-enhancement, that tactile 
values, that is, modelling which gives the effect of solidity, stimu- 
late our conviction of reality by vividly suggesting the actual 
feeling of an object, and thus enhance our sense of life. He 
maintains that the representation of movement causes us to 
rehearse in ourselves the muscular sensations which would be 
involved in performing the act or assuming the posture which 
the picture presents to us. Hence by the successful rendering 
of movement, or of a posture which invites us to a reposeful 
muscular state, our vital energies are stimulated. Space-com- 
position, in giving us a vivid sense of the extensity of the world 
about us, enlarges our personality and makes us feel that we 
are living more abundantly. In his earlier work, Mr. Berenson 
dismisses color almost entirely, but in the final summary of his 
aesthetic theory, at the end of his volume on the North Italian 


reaver tele oC ROE LT CBS Mi 375 


Painters, he admits having underestimated the value of color, 
but still allows it only secondary importance. He writes: 
“Color is less essential [than tactile values, movement, and 
space-composition] in all that distinguishes a master-painting 
from a Persian rug.’” From all this it follows that painting is 
at its best when it renders the human figure, and the additional 
reason by which this conclusion is confirmed is interesting. He 
says that all appreciation of art, all preception of natural objects, 
involves a projection of our feelings into the things we see, but 
in figure-painting alone is this not illusion, since feelings akin to 
our own do animate other human beings, but they do not ani- 
mate trees, rocks, and mountains. In short, his conceptions are 
based upon the always untenable, and now obsolete, theory of 
‘“‘Einfiithlung.”” No sound psychology has ever maintained that 
in perceiving an object we necessarily go through a process of 
internal mimicry of it, and find it agreeable or disagreeable 
according as the movements involved are or are not congenial 
to our muscles. Concerning the theory of Einfiithlung, Bosan- 
quet writes: ‘‘It has been supposed that when we take pleasure 
in a graceful curve, our eye is executing this same curve, ‘that 
we feel pleasure in this movement, or in the ease of it, and turn 
this pleasure into a quality of the object whose outlines we 
follow.’ Well, it simply is not so—the eye in following a curve 
moves with jerks and in straight lines. ‘The muscles are mere 
scene-shifters.’’’ (Three Lectures on Aesthetics, page 24.) 

If the theory offered by Mr. Berenson were true, any dis- 
tortion of the human figure would invite us to attempt to make 
movements or to put ourselves in postures which our bodies 
could not possibly accomplish, and the effect would be objec- 
tionable to us. We would scarcely find pleasant our attempts 
to mimic the uncomfortable position of the nude in Manet’s 
“‘Olympia,’’ or the contortions depicted in the best work of 
El Greco. His theory rests on the misconception that art is 
essentially photography, and in this case, a kind of muscular 
photography. Incidentally, it may be remarked that the whole 
theory of Berenson is adopted by Professor H. S. Langfeld, in 
a book which shows on nearly every page a total lack of real 
aesthetic experience. It makes of art something completely 
comprehensible to a person who has had no personal or imme- 
diate contact with actual works of art. 

In his explanation of ‘‘tactile values’’ Mr. Berenson exceeds 


376 ACADEMTECGY ART CRE? GISM 


the ordinary limits of sophistry. His emphasis of the fact that 
suggestions of touch give a note of conviction to our visual per- 
ception of an object, is only an elaboration of the platitude that 
the word ‘“‘tangible’’ is a synonym for ‘“‘real.’’ It is undeniable 
that effects of solidity in a painting may add to the reality of an 
object, and so represent one of the innumerable ways in which 
our natural powers may be called into play by a work of art. 
But they have no such primary or unique importance as Mr. 
Berenson ascribes to them. To give them that importance is 
to fall back on the imitative theory of art and throw to the winds 
all considerations of design. For example, in the work of Claude, 
tactile values are very imperfectly rendered, though with no 
damage to aesthetic value, since it is not by touch that we 
grasp the essential quality of landscape. Mr. Berenson’s theory 
logically binds him to accept as great masterpieces the countless 
academic paintings in which tactile values are violently over- 
accentuated by painters who are merely skillful imitators. He 
shows that he fails to grasp the importance of the specific medium 
of an art and would make of painting something that could be 
at best inferior imitation of sculpture.* 

In the light of theories so patently absurd, it is easy to under- 
stand his overestimation of Florentine painting as compared 
with Venetian, as evidenced by the very singular statement 
about Rubens: ‘‘In every other respect (than technique), he 
was an Italian: and, after Michel Angelo, to say Itahan was 
practically to say Florentine.’+ Rubens was assuredly much 
more Venetian than Florentine. Mr. Berenson’s confusion of 
the values of painting with those of sculpture leads him to 
overlook altogether the plastic values that make up the real 
greatness of the painters of the Italian Renaissance. 

By his emphasis upon space-composition, Mr. Berenson re- 
duces relatively flat painting to mere pattern, since his con- 
ception implies that composition in the ordinary sense of the 
word, is relegated to a status outside the formal character of a 


* “The illustrator who communicates ideated sensations which compel 
us to identify ourselves with such virility, with such proud insensibility, 
with such energy and endurance, is an artist indeed.’’ “The North 
Italian Painters of the Renaissance,’ page 60. He is speaking of Cosimo 
Tura. Our intention is not to contest his estimate of that particular 
painter, but his reasons for it. 

+ Italics ours. 


RG OT NG Cor A Rit CRT EEC eS aM Shi 


picture. Light, except as an aid to modelling, is never men- 
tioned, yet light as a design in itself and as a means of organiz- 
ing a painting, was constantly used by the great Italians. 

One of the gravest faults in Mr. Berenson’s writings is his 
neglect of color. He regards it essentially as only a means of 
embellishing surface. Its structural and organic values are 
never hinted at, either explicitly or by implication, yet color is 
the plastic element on which the most important achievements 
of the artist depend. How important color is, has been indi- 
cated in our chapters on Color, on Giotto, Piero della Fran- 
cesca, the Venetians, Rubens, Rembrandt, El Greco, Velasquez, 
Renoir, and Cézanne. It can hardly be questioned that a sense 
of color is the one thing which no painter of the first rank has 
ever lacked. It is not without significance that Mr. Berenson’s 
volume on Venetian painting is almost entirely an account of 
the social and political conditions of the time, and of the literary 
qualities of the painters discussed. In the conclusion to his 
volume on North Italian painting he recognizes the need of 
amplifying his account of color, but he has made no move to 
do so in the nearly eighteen years since the book was written. 
It is evident that he has said substantially nothing about color, 
because his essentially academic theory has blinded him to 
what, more than any other element, characterizes painting as 
an art. Such are the consequences of thinking of painting in 
terms of sculpture. 

Mr. Berenson’s mechanical standards, and his reliance upon 
irrelevant sentimentalities in the judgment of paintings are due 
primarily to his fundamental classification of the qualities in 
plastic art under two heads, illustration and decoration. Decora- 
tion he defines as ‘“‘all those elements in a work of art which 
appeal directly to the senses, such as color and tone; or directly 
stimulate ideated sensations, such as, for instance, Form and 
Movement.” By illustration he means “‘everything which in a 
work of art appeals to us, not for any intrinsic quality, as of 
color or form or composition, contained in the work of art 
itself, but for the value the thing represented has elsewhere.”’ 
He claims that in any given work of art these qualities vary quite 
independently of one another and he cites Raphael as great in 
illustration and, except as regards space-composition, compara- 
tively inferior in decorative power; in Masaccio, he implies, the 
contrary is the case. 


378 AGADEMTC CARI CR TG is iM 


Such a classification represents the very essence of academi- 
cism, in that it assigns the values of a single organic whole to 
two separate and unrelated compartments. It omits the funda- 
mental principle of art, the adjustment of form to expression, 
that is, of integration of the values of what is represented in 
properly plastic terms. He praises Raphael for the range and 
power of his imagination in reproducing classic and religious 
themes; but if we apply strictly Mr. Berenson’s definition of 
illustration, that “it appeals to us for the value the thing has 
elsewhere (than in the painting),’’ then this representation of 
the themes of antiquity has no value, for painting. His defini- 
tion of decoration, as the ‘‘intrinsic’’ appeal of a work of art, apart 
from all interpretations of subject-matter, implies that a picture 
is a combination of what is meaningless with what is irrelevant. 

Mr. Berenson’s reasoning ignores the facts that the form of 
a picture is always an embodiment of what the artist finds 
essential in some part of the real world, and that it is the dis- 
tinction of the greatest artists that they give us what is essential 
and not what is adventitious; but there is no means of making 
a distinction between what is essential and what is adventitious 
unless we have in mind the object or situation represented. 
The artist gives us what is essential in plastic terms. Hence to 
judge his form we must have a clear grasp of the medium of 
painting, so that we can say whether or not it has been 
fully utilized—whether or not there has been overaccentuation 
or undue reliance upon any one plastic element. Art is expres- 
sion, and the expression is always of something, and by means 
appropriate to the particular art in question. Mr. Berenson’s 
isolation of these two aspects into separate compartments repre- 
sents not an art judgment but the common human weakness 
that seeks to avoid a personal reaction in which we are ourselves 
obliged to go through the process of creative interpretation 
which resulted in the original experience of the artist. Psy- 
chologically, it is akin to that form of academicism in ethics that 
tries to judge a moral act in abstraction from the two essentials, 
the individual and the consequences. 

In contrast to Mr. Berenson’s implied view, we are contending 
that to appreciate a work of art, or any other manifestation of 
human instinct acting intelligently, we are obliged to put our- 
selves into the situation out of which the work of art sprang, 
and reproduce the artist’s vision of it. This is a difficulty from 


Ae OM Ak CRW eChsM 379 


which the academician shrinks; hence he resorts to the easy 
mechanical classifications. The shrinking takes the form of 
judging the factors or aspects in isolation, not as elements in 
an organic whole. It divides form from expression, just as it 
divides composition from color, and color from modelling, and 
in consequence it cannot judge any of them aesthetically. It 
is only when we have seen what grasp of the world the artist is 
undertaking to set forth that we can say whether his work is 
important as an embodiment of human values, or whether he 
has succeeded in integrating the plastic means to make an 
intrinsically moving plastic form. 

This criterion exposes the falsity of Mr. Berenson’s estimate 
of Raphael’s greatness even from the point of view of illustra- 
tion. He writes: ‘‘The central Italian painters were not only 
among the profoundest and grandest, but among the most 
pleasing and winning illustrators that we Europeans have ever 
had.’’ On the contrary, the cheapness of Raphael’s means is 
reflected in the melodramatic character of his scenes, the soft- 
ness and sweetness of his personages, the exaggeration of his 
spatial effects. His classic themes become mere suaveness, his 
religious themes, sugariness, when contrasted with similar themes 
rendered with the power of Michel Angelo, the dignity of Giotto, 
the other-worldliness of El Greco. As we have seen in the Intro- 
duction, any deficiency in the ability to achieve plastic embodi- 
ment results in a loss of human values in subject-matter; examples 
of this are found in Delacroix, Bécklin and Millet. In Giorgione, 
Titian, Rembrandt, or Renoir, great plastic genius is expressed 
in forms which are deeply impregnated with human values, and 
these human values determine the proportion in which the 
plastic means are used, so that the forms cannot be appreciated 
or judged unless we retain our contact with what is expressed. 

Mr. Berenson’s classification entirely overlooks the important 
factor of decoration as it really exists in paintings. There is a 
general decorative texture in Paolo Veronese, in Rubens, in the 
Eighteenth Century French painters, and in Renoir, which con- 
stitutes an important ingredient of the aesthetic effect, but which 
is not particularly expressive of the essential character of the 
individual thing portrayed. When we say that Cézanne is 
stronger than Renoir, but that in Renoir there is a greater wealth 
of charm, we mean that in Renoir there is present much of this 
decorative element that is relatively absent in Cézanne. That 


380 ACADEMIC ART CRITICISM 


distinction is unintelligible according to Berenson’s principles, 
since both painters have the intrinsic values which he lumps 
together under the head of “‘decoration.’’ Nor indeed do his 
principles permit of any appreciation of either Renoir or Cézanne, 
because both of those artists can be understood only by realizing 
that they, like Giorgione and Titian, and indeed like Giotto, 
achieve their effects chiefly through the organizing power of 
color. To that fundamental principle he never even refers, 
and the long series of his judgments shows that he has never in 
any degree understood or felt the force of it. 

Mr. Berenson’s work deals not with the objective facts that 
enter into an appreciation of art-values, but with a form of anti- 
quarianism made up of historical, social, and sentimental inter- 
ests entirely adventitious to plastic art. It would be unworthy 
of serious attention except for the regrettable influence his wri- 
tings have had in filling our universities with bad teaching on art 
and our public galleries with bad Italian paintings. The courses 
in art at practically all the universities and colleges in America 
are based upon the obsolete psychology, the unscientific method 
of approach that make it impossible for students to obtain either 
a grasp of aesthetic essentials or a real and personal experience 
with works of art. The instruction offered at such institutions 
is a mixture of spurious sentiment and historical data, elaborated 
into a system that has no relevancy to either the plastic values 
in painting or the principles of scientific education. Even worse 
is the fact that this deplorable tradition is given currency among 
the general public by books such as Professor Langfeld’s and 
Professor Mather’s, which offer in the name of public education 
in art something which has nothing to do with art or with 
education. This academic instruction, given both in the class- 
room and in popular books, is largely responsible for the con- 
fusion of values which have made the public the victim of 
sentimentalists and antiquarians who breathe with religious 
awe the names of great painters whose work they never under- 
stood. 

Mr. Berenson has aided materially in the identification of the 
works of some of the early Italian painters by means of investi- 
gations that are primarily and fundamentally akin to those of 
hand-writing experts. Interesting as that work has been in 
itself, it has yielded no data relevant to an appreciation of 
the values that make paintings works of art. Indeed, the 


Pater) Pov bie ARI CR Wee tS M 381 


principal effects of the activities of handwriting-experts in the 
field of art have been bad ones. They have resurrected the 
names of a number of early, and very bad, Italian painters 
whose work the picture-dealers sell accompanied by an expert’s 
certificate of authenticity; in other words, antiquity, not aes- 
thetic merit, has become the guide in a traffic in the kind of 
pictures which George Moore calls ‘‘cock-eyed saints painted — 
on gold backgrounds.”’ The host of bad paintings in the public 
galleries of Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Detroit and other 
cities, and especially in the Johnson Collection in Philadelphia, 
show the sad results of the expert—dealer—author— university 
method of propagating counterfeit thinking and counterfeit art. 

The especially lamentable feature of the whole system is that 
the fetish-worship is so entrenched and buttressed by prestige 
that it is a waste of time to suggest that a more rational method 
of studying art be employed. Recently, we made a first-hand 
study of the facilities, the personnel, the equipment, and the 
practical results upon the students, in the department of art in 
one of the largest and best-known American colleges, whose 
courses are founded upon the kind of psychology and educational 
practices above analyzed. The revelations of the study were so 
representative of intellectual and educational disorder, of such 
widespread social and economic significance, that my colleague, 
Mr. Laurence Buermeyer, described the incident in his recent 
book The Aesthetic Experience. On page 165 of that book Mr. 
Buermeyer writes: ‘Recently one of the American colleges 
applied for an opportunity to provide its students with first- 
hand acquaintance with a very large and representative collec- 
tion of works of plastic art. The collection, in range and qual- 
ity, is without parallel in America; its owner, however, considered 
that it could be fruitfully studied only by those possessing an 
intelligent conception of human nature and of aesthetic principles. 
Compliance with the request was therefore accompanied by the 
condition that the college should codperate to provide such a 
background; the codperation involved, on the college’s part, no 
more than a statement of the instruction already given, a state- 
ment sufficiently detailed to make possible a plan for such 
supplementation as might seem necessary. The college itself 
was not asked to provide the additional instruction, which would 
have been furnished as a part of the collection’s resources, nor 
was it asked to modify in any way its existing courses in art. 

27 


382 ACAD EMITC MAIR. a GiRiMsT etl 


Nevertheless, the information sought was refused, apparently on 
the ground that to give it would have involved an admission 
that the instruction already offered might not be all-sufficient. 
Thus are day-dreams sheltered from the destructive action of 
facts. 

“The incident is striking because of the extraordinary contrast 
it presents between profession and actual practice, between the 
intelligent open-mindedness which may reasonably be expected 
of an institution devoted to the advancement of learning and 
education, and the somnambulistic adherence to precedent 
actually displayed. But it is not unique. It is a symptom of 
the entrenchment of vested interest and unchangeable habits 
which are as destructive to art as they are to life in general.’’ 


III 


ANALYSES OF PAINTINGS 


The arrangement of the succeeding analyses follows in the 
main the order of discussion in the text. However, the corre- 
spondence is not exact: a number of painters whose pictures are 
analyzed are not mentioned in the general discussion, and the 
order of arrangement of these has been determined chiefly by 
convenience. 

Since the discussions in this Appendix are intended to be 
illustrative and not exhaustive, no attempt has been made to 
deal fully with all the pictures referred to. Many pictures which 
would in themselves repay extended comment are dismissed with 
only a few words, by which attention is called to their more 
important or less obvious characteristics. 

The following abbreviations indicate the collections in which 
the pictures analyzed may be found. Names of churches are 
not abbreviated, nor are those of private collections: 


A.C. Andreadel Castagno Museum, N. National Gallery, London. 
Florence. P. Pitti, Florence. 
A.V. Academy, Venice, Pr. Prado, Madrid. 
B. Borghese, Rome. S.M. Museum of San Marco, Flor- 
B.F. Barnes Foundation, Merion, ence. 
Pennsylvania. U, Ufizzi, Florence. 
L. Louvre, Paris. V. Museum of the Vatican, 
M. Metropolitan Museum, New Rome. 
York. W. Wallace Collection, London. 


THE ASSISI GIOTTOS 


In all these frescoes, the color is fresh, rich, and free from stridency. It 
constitutes an infinite number of designs in itself, through relations of harmony 
and contrast. (See note on immediate effect of color forms in “An Approach 
to Art,” by Mary Mullen, page 21.) In its totality it forms a pervasive color- 
glow of great richness and equally great delicacy and charm: it is made up 
of red and golden-yellow, contrasted and yet merged with a light, pervasive 
blue that in its very blueness is a unique sensuous experience. In composition, 
there is a free use of architectural figures, effective as masses in relation to 
total design, which are interesting in themselves as patterns; the second 


384 AUN CATHY ESS OF ar rA DIN GIST ON cas 


interest does not compete with the first but reinforces it. The figures, masses, 
etc., placed apparently at random, never seem dispersed or scattered but 
always form a unity. The figures when grouped are rhythmic, their move- 
ments are easy, graceful, and convincing (that is, they are doing something 
both real and individually characteristic: they are intent but not exaggerat- 
edly so to the point of melodrama). The coloring of the figures is varied: it is 
bright in some, merely tonal in others, but there is always variety and harmony 
within the figure, and the color of the figure as a whole fits perfectly into the 
general color-design. There is a rather rigid handling of the figures, though 
it does not interfere with their fluid but quiet movement. The movement 
appears both in the figures as wholes and in their gestures, and it forms a 
design in itself. 

The three-dimensional character is prominent but not engrossing: the 
rounded solidity of the objects adds to their reality. It is achieved not 
only through use of modelling, but by marvellously expressive line, brought 
into a linear pattern of intrinsic value, and also by a color-design which 
is in itself charming. The perspective is fully adequate to give depth to the 
picture, with a corresponding increase in effectiveness, but it is never over- 
accentuated. It is a perspective rather indicated than rendered in detail; 
the economy and simplicity, however, do not detract but rather add. They 
show use of comparatively primitive means to secure maximum of effect, 
effect which equals or surpasses that achieved by later men with much more 
elaborate means. (This fact is an illustration of the wide difference between 
artistic power and technical competence or repertory of resources.) 

The background swims in an atmosphere of pervasive, silvery, crystalline 
delicacy, in which objects seem to be floating ethereally. This greatly height- 
ens the mystical effect, and is an illustration of Giotto’s consummate power 
of adjusting plastic means to narrative and human values. This delicate 
pervasive mysticism is akin to that of many of the best Chinese painters; 
it is greatly augmented by the use of light, of which Giotto was a supreme 
master, both in modelling of figures and in vivifying atmosphere. The 
light is reinforced by the color, which pervades the atmosphere just as does 
the light, instead of being confined to the landscape, shut in between the lines 
demarcating actual material objects. When, as in the ‘‘ Miraculous Produc- 
tion of a Spring of Water,” he uses light dramatically, he achieves a reality, 
with a fluffy, fleece-like effect, of great delicacy. The drama is never over- 
done, and the delicacy does not detract from the force and dignity. 

In these frescoes, there is not the conventional central mass with balancing 
features on either side. An obviously displaced main figure is brought into 
relation with the other parts of the canvas by a series of rhythmic lines, colors, 
or masses which save the picture from being one-sided or disjointed. Giotto 
can use color livened up with light, or other means of variation, and make it 
function as a balancing mass; he can do the same thing with rhythmic lines, 
so that an arresting design of line or color often plays the part of a balancing 
mass in composition. This use of color in composition seems to have been 
overlooked by the critics: its recognition illustrates the need of making 





Giorgio Louvre 





Botticelli Analysis, page 404 Uffizi 


In the Giorgio the formal and decorative values are unified while in the 
Botticelli the decorative quality predominates. 


(385 ) 





Giotto Assisi 


Analysis, page 389 


( 386 ) 





Giotto Padua 


Analysis, page 391 


( 387 ) 





Barnes Foundation 


page 493 


is, 


Analys 


ezanne 


s 


C 


( 388 ) 


THE ASSISI GIOTTOS 389 


design central in the analysis of a picture, and judging everything else by 
the part it plays in design. In Giotto, in other words, a displaced or 
decentred object does not fix our attention on itself, and does not frustrate 
our demand for balance. 

The Dream of St. Francis. The saint is asleep in the small shelter which 
is made up of straight columns. The whole of the narrative is in that part 
of the painting. The episode occupies about one-half of the canvas. On the 
left is a temple set obliquely, which should, by all the conventional rules of 
composition, be disapproved. Instead, by the very arrangement of lines in 
oblique fashion, making an interplay of planes, the left side is especially 
striking and an integral part in the design; it attracts our attention equally 
with the right side of the picture, in spite of the wealth of plastic detail there 
displayed. To give added interest to the left side, but chiefly to call atten- 
tion to the awry building, a life-size figure is placed in a conventional position. 
The figure is lightly done, with such complete freedom from accentuation 
of detail that its unobtrusiveness makes it perfectly fit for the plastic function 
of tying up the composition, to which function its mass, line, and color are 
adjusted. This is a supreme triumph of line-composition of a novel character. 
The unexpected is also the inevitable. 

In the foregoing the use of mass in composition is illustrated. The role 
of color is shown strikingly in St. Francis Restores his Apparel to his Father. 
This picture too is obviously in two halves, but in this case there is no figure, 
object, or mass to effect a union between the two halves, each a group of 
figures. The connecting link between them is color, which, beginning as 
atmosphere in the space between the main figures in the respective halves, is 
a thing of independent value, apart from its function in tinting the garments. 
It is made interesting by a slight lighting in the foreground, and extends to 
the deep beyond, where we see the horizon; our attention is carried up into 
the sky and brought back in the centre of the picture to the vertical plane 
which forms the foreground. This functional unifying use of color, effective 
in a degree rarely approached by other painters, gives with admirable success 
a sense of infinity. It is the absence of any such unifying means which makes 
the Botticelli Sistine fresco of somewhat the same double design fall apart. 
The fact that color is not an integral part of form never bothers us: the form 
and the color are so perfectly combined and realized that, though not welded 
into a single structural unit, they blend harmoniously, and they are separable 
only when abstracted and analyzed. 

Giotto’s mastery of line is of the same degree as his mastery of composi- 
tion. His line is terse, simple, powerful, and in the highest degree expressive 
and personally distinctive. His three-dimensional effects do not stand 
forth as do those of Michel Angelo and especially of Leonardo, but give a 
simple, balanced, convincing rounded fullness. In him indeed, the realiza- 
tion of form and movement culminates. This achievement, masterful but 
unobtrusive, is due to the use of all the plastic means, that is, line, light, color, 
atmosphere, and mass, all blended to realize a sense of tranquillity, peace, 
reality and of the dignity, infinity, and mystery of religion. 


390 ANATIOY SE Sie0 FieiA TN Nias 


There is also in a very high degree the use of design within design which 
serves to add variety to unity. Any object or group of objects, looked at 
either in itself or with relation to surrounding objects, functions rhythmically, 
both in itself as a part of the group in which it is a unit, and with relation to 
other coérdinate groups; this means balance, harmony, etc. 

St. Francis’s Vision of a Palace and Weapons. The composition hangs 
together perfectly, although theoretically impossible of unification. The 
two figures and their milieu, red, blue, all swim in an imperceptible atmos- 
. phere of color, but the dominant note of the figure-setting is blue. The 
temple at the right side is red and ivory, but here the dominant note is red. 
The composition is unified by means of these contrasting colors, joined by 
ivory bands, at right angles to the columns of the canopy; also by a strip 
of the dominant blue note which is the setting of the group, which extends 
in two horizontal lines and forms the roof of the two upper porticoes of the 
temple, a deeper blue in the second roof, and a pale blue, in which an ivory 
note dominates. These means tie this picture together not only as a plastic 
unit in its entirety but in regard to any of its contributory elements, such 
as line or mass. The chief agent in the unification is color. 

The last point to be emphasized with reference to these pictures is the 
combination of plastic means with expression, with grasp of the essence of 
what is presented. Giotto is not photographic in his realism: everything is so 
finely rendered that we get essences rather than details: that is, the spirit, 
the basic feeling of the objects is depicted. This is true even in the pictures 
in which the details are shown. It is true of the religious aspect, the solem- 
nity and mystery; it is also true of more mundane things, of the material 
objects and human events depicted. 

An example is St. Francis Clothing the Poor. The effect in this is increased 
by the simplicity of the means used, the minimum of external objects which 
are obviously interesting or arresting; in spite of this simplicity the picture 
is of epic bigness. Indeed, this picture shows the universality of Giotto’s 
genius in another aspect: it presents us with the grandeur and majesty of 
nature in landscape, in a manner worthy of Claude, and at a time when the 
aesthetic aspect of nature was so generally overlooked that only a man of 
the most original genius could have become aware of it. 

In St. Francis and the Birds, the ability to render the spirit of place, in a 
lyric vein, as Sisley did later, is manifested. In this picture design is para- 
mount, and is achieved by line and all-pervasive color, atmosphere, and glow. 


THE PADUA GIOTTOS 


The first effect of these later pictures is not so overpowering as at Assisi, 
but is more suave, fluid, dainty. The reason may be that they are smaller 
in size, but more probably is that they are formal and symmetrical in compo- 
sition. In the Assisi compositions all the rules of symmetry, as ordinarily 
accepted, are so disregarded that the problem of unifying disparate elements 
is enormously increased in difficulty. In the Padua pictures, though there 


ieee oer UAT Ge LOTT. OS 301 


is apparent diversity, the general scheme of arrangement is more conven- 
tional: the elements are placed with reference to a centre mass, and variety is 
accomplished rather by variation in the subject-matter. Though the intrinsic 
value of these compositions is great, the effect of novelty and power is dimin- 
ished by the relatively stereotyped character of the composition. 

The use of architectural elements is continued, but their role is changed. 
They are no longer part of the central design, but function as background, 
not as the main masses of the composition, to be balanced against groups 
of persons. Figures and animals have become the chief compositional masses. 
Their unity is perfect, but the relegation of architecture and landscape to a posi- 
tion of secondary importance produces a loss in boldness and originality, and 
also in simplicity. The loss may be seen if we compare the Padua ‘“‘Entry into 
Jerusalem” and “Flight into Egypt” with the Assisi “Flight into Egypt.” 

Though less simple, the Padua pictures also show the power of securing 
great effects with simplicity of means. The compositional units are not 
really very varied in the compositional effects they achieve as plastic units, 
but they owe their power to the infinite variety with which they are employed 
and put in relation with one another. In the “Pieta,’’ the basic compositional! 
design is the oval made by Christ and the four figures; in ‘‘Joachim’s Vision,”’ 
it is essentially the same; yet in their entirety these two pictures seem radi- 
cally different. Such effectiveness conjoined with economy of means is to be 
found subsequently in Rembrandt and Velasquez, and occasionally in Titian 
and Tintoretto. 

The color is less jewel-like, and it is not so combined with atmosphere to 
give the pervasive effect which forms a great part of the charm of the Assisi 
pictures, and which contributes so much to the effect of mysticism. In 
this again there is a descent in power and originality. But there is the same 
perfect success in integrating subject-matter and plastic means, the mark of 
which is the fact that a spectator sensitive to plastic values is able to get the 
narrative or human values without knowing the story related—the essence 
of the drama without the details. 

This may be seen supremely illustrated in Joseph and Mary Returning after 
Their Marriage. Here we get the specific and powerful effect of a solemn 
procession, given in the most dignified manner by grouping and spacing both 
between the individual groups and the figures in them. Line, color, mass, al! 
seem imbued with the central idea of procession. No element is overdone— 
we are conscious of nothing but a rhythmic, measured, orderly movement 
from one side of the picture to the other, to which all the elements contribute. 
The pervasive color, akin to that of Chinese painting, characteristic of the 
earlier pictures is here retained, and it gives a sense of an infinite sky in the 
background without obvious accentuation of perspective: everything swims 
in an aura of silvery light blue which conveys the infinity of space better than 
any amount of ordinary perspective. The aerial ambiency to be seen in 
Masaccio is here forecasted (though the effect may be due to age). It is 
a perfect example, one of the best in existence, of conveying a central psy- 
chological idea (in this case that of procession) through representation in a 


392 AN AE WS £5 670 Biigh Atl aN SN ee 


painting in which all the plastic elements converge and unify about that 
idea. 

The Baptism. Compare this picture with Simone Martini’s ‘‘The Ascent 
to Calvary:’ dignified, expressive color, figures, and architectural elements 
give a convincing and powerful story. In this we get simplicity, dignity, 
drama, majesty, rendered with an effect of peace, while in the Martini we 
get the sense of turmoil, executed in brilliant colors and with a tendency 
towards the melodramatic. There is analogy here with the relative ability 
of Tintoretto and of Delacroix to tell a story: Tintoretto is able to do so in 
genuinely plastic terms, but Delacroix is always obliged to have recourse to 
adventitious aids. With this picture, it is absolutely unnecessary to know 
anything about the ostensible subject to feel the deep sense of mystic power, 
grandeur, majesty; in short, of religion in its broadest sense. Every relevant 
detail of this experience is given adequate plastic embodiment. 

Descent from the Cross. In this there is the same use of a wall to divide 
the picture that there is in Botticelli’s ‘Moses Kills the Egyptian.’”’ Inthe 
latter however, the two halves are separated by an unbridged abyss. There 
is no unity either on a first inspection or after analysis. In this, the wall is 
perfectly merged in the general composition: it may be looked upon as a 
reinforcing mass, to frame in both the figures which enter into the narrative 
and the various plastic elements in the front of the picture. The wall is both 
a focal area in the composition and an independent source of interest in the 
design; because of the legitimacy of both these purposes it has none of the 
effect of disturbance and distraction which we find in the Botticelli. 


PIETRO LORENZETTI 


Scenes from the Life of St. Umilta (U.). This picture shows how the 
Sienese School utilized the Byzantine ancona tradition, which in Cimabue is 
chiefly represented by a figure. The perspective is taken over at about the 
stage reached by Giotto. The color is dry, laid on, and the feeling for color 
is poor in general, except in the lower part of the ancona on the extreme right. 

Birth of John the Baptist (School of Pietro Lorenzetti) (Z.). The compo- 
sition is evidently influenced by Giotto. In color, the red in the bed-spread 
and the ivory, light blue, light green, and red of the woman in bed and the 
other figures make up a pleasing combination that goes well with the general 
composition. 


SIMONE MARTINI 


The Ascent to Calvary (L.). This picture owes its chief charm to brilliant 
color, successfully varied as means for reinforcing the obvious drama con- 
veyed by lines indicating positive movement. 


MANNI 


The Adoration of the Magi (LZ.). The color is deeply felt, with a tendency 
towards structural use, and charmingly varied. This color is bright in the 


Py r : 


ROReA aN Gr E ECO 303 


figures, rather dark (brown and green) in the background; it is juicy every- 
where. It is essentially illustration done in adequate plastic terms, but with 
no great power beyond its value as illustration. 


PISANELLO 


The Vision of St. Eustace (N.G.). The background is a succession of dark 
greens and browns varied with spots of white (animals). This is a beautiful 
example of the effect obtained by the Japanese method of practically abolish- 
ing perspective, representing it by almost perpendicular planes, instead of 
planes receding into the distance. In this representation of perspective by 
substitutes, or what the French critics term ‘‘equivalents,”’ it resembles the 
Persian miniatures also. 


THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL 


The Florentine School begins with Giotto. It was not until the work of 
Masaccio, however, that a fully developed Florentine ‘‘form”’ can be dis- 
tinguished. The preceding painters who belonged to the school represent 
the transition from Mediaeval art. The transition period, subsequent to 
Giotto, may best be illustrated by Fra Angelico. Prior to him we have the 
Giottoesque tradition well employed in Orcagna’s Coronation of the Virgin. 
Giotto’s contribution is here shown in terms of color (which later became Fra 
Angelico’s), with Giotto’s means in attaining three-dimensional character. 
The expression in this picture, while not excessively accentuated, is felt to be 
too much an element. 


LORENZO MONACO 


The Florentine tradition is again exemplified with marked retrogression 
and overaccentuation in Lorenzo Monaco’s Virgin and Child with Four Saints 
(U.). In this the design is built around religious themes, speciously reinforced 
by Gothic architectural features. (This use of adventitious means, non-inte- 
grated detail, to convey an idea is parallel to Tschaikowsky’s, in ‘‘Overture, 
1812;” see page 49.) The actual effect is only decorative, as is also the use of 
feebly felt and only slightly moving color. The feebleness of the color and 
the general weakness of the picture are compensated for in some degree by 
the successful use of linear rhythm; but the picture remains essentially a 
decoration, reverting, in point of realism and naturalism, to a stage before 
Giotto and nearer Cimabue. 


FRA ANGELICO 


Descent from the Cross (.S.M.). The composition and drawing of this pic- 
ture, as well as the general feeling, are obviously derived from the Sienese. 
The color is Lorenzo Monaco’s, but is poorer because of its garishness. In the 
drawing there is also a reminiscence of Giotto, but it is emotionally over- 
charged, with an effect of perfervid pietism. The result of this is affectation 
because of the inadequate plastic support. In the whole of the picture, there 

28 


394 ANALYSES Ora Ad aan ao 


is a dearth of originality. Perspective shows the influence of Masaccio, but 
the details in the distant landscape, instead of being blurred, are emphasized 
in their distinctness; consequently all realistic effect is lost, and the landscape 
is merely a patterned setting for the religious theme. The modelling is less 
subtle than in Giotto or Piero della Francesca. The spacing of groups is 
often unsuccessful: the groups as a whole play a part in the composition, 
but the figures in them have little distinction or compositional role. The 
result is flatness, to which the uniformity of the haloes contributes: There 
is monotony, lack of fluidity, grace, or rhythm. The color, at its best, is 
fresh, delicate and charmingly harmonized, but it is not used very suc- 
cessfully either compositionally or structurally. What plastic value the 
picture has is due chiefly to the spots of color, contained in simple, graceful 
lines. 

Transfiguration, from Life of Jesus (S.M.). A flood of light is distributed 
uniformly over the picture, with shadows few and rather conventional. The 
color is very good, but pleasing rather than powerful. The figure has design, 
and the use of the mass in connection with light and color yields a good plastic 
unity and a real effect of power. 

Crucifixion (.S.M.). In this picture there is a comparative absence of Fra 
Angelico’s usually overloaded sentiment, and the expressiveness in consequence 
is really dignified and convincing. Plastically, the picture is a success. The 
formal relations in general are good, especially the graceful wave that starts 
at one end of the group of figures and extends, with well-proportioned breaks 
in continuity, to the other end of the picture. This is a varied, convincing, 
and excellently spaced group, in which each figure has plenty of room and is 
related to each other figure in an effective rhythm. The modelling recalls 
Giotto: the unobtrusive contrast of light and shadow gives a successfully 
rounded three-dimensional form. The color is beautifully varied, a harmoni- 
ous design of pleasing shades applied in various patterns. All the plastic 
elements are well combined to form an exceedingly rich ensemble. Fra 
Angelico shows here that in an impressive conception, charged with deep 
human values, he is more than an eclectic, although it would be difficult to find 
any single element in the composition that cannot be referred to a prototype. 

It is possible—though this is only a hypothesis—that a good deal of the 
charm of this picture is due to its restoration by an artist who had a greater 
feeling for reality than Fra Angelico. This theory is fortified by the quality 
of the color, which is juicy and not acid, and by the success with which the 
faces are realized as three-dimensional forms, especially as there is no visible 
display of the means by which this is accomplished. In some instances, the 
manner of modelling is reminiscent of Domenico Veneziano and Piero della 
Francesca, 


MASACCIO 


Frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel.* Masaccio represents a much greater 
advance upon his predecessors than any painter in the interval between Giotto 


* Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence. 


MASACCIO 395 


and himself. He is a departure from Giotto in his color, drawing, spacing, 
and in his tendency to balance symmetrically by vertical lines, usually archi- 
tectural. In this last respect, the contrast is greater with the Assisi Giottos 
than with those at Padua. 

What strikes us most strongly about Masaccio is his increasing realism or 
naturalism. His drawing is more expressive of natural movement than that 
of his predecessors, very simple, with freedom from sharp line. His figures 
look more like actual people. There is a tendency to dramatic expression 
amounting in most cases to intentness rather than to melodrama. The real- 
istic effect contains a suggestion of Velasquez, in spite of the distinction from 
Velasquez’s sharp-cut, crystalline clearness and bright color: in both there is 
ability to catch the essence of a thing. 

The composition is more balanced than in Giotto, though still far from 
academic balance. The use of architectural masses in background continues, 
especially in a manner characteristic of the Padua Giottos, with the architec- 
tural features of great depth and dignity; they are, however, more realistically 
treated than in Giotto’s compositions, with less of the effect of other-worldli- 
ness. The debt to Giotto is again shown in the position of the heads of the 
figures with reference to the necks, and in the relation of each head to the 
others, especially in ‘‘St. Peter Raising Tabitha.’’ In this same picture, the 
figures in the centre form a group, subdivided into three smaller groups of 
two each, with unequal spaces between these groups. This accentuates the 
interest of the group as a whole and forms the apex of a sort of pyramid, 
directing the attention to the sloping figures on either side. The total effect 
is of a well-lighted, effective rhythmic group. 

Drawing. Masaccio’s line is terse and expressive, but not clear-cut like 
Giotto’s. Its blurred effect rather recalls Titian, with shaded contours rather 
than sharp outlines. Though on the whole less highly developed, the 
draughtsmanship compares very favorably with that of Rembrandt, Dau- 
mier, Goya, Pascin; it is realistic in the best sense, that is, imaginatively 
realistic: 

Masaccio’s color as a whole is sombre. It pervades the whole atmosphere 
as in Giotto; the atmosphere is so much heavier, however, that it seems to 
assume the proportions of a haze akin to the Venetian glow, though it is 
rather a murky atmospheric veil than a suffusion of color. This atmosphere 
suggests Rembrandt, though the chiaroscuro is much less: what does the 
work is the combination of light and color. It serves, however, the same 
effects of mysticism and dignity. In general the color is good, though not 
brilliant or very varied; it is austere, and perfectly merged in the general 
dignity of the treatment. 

The perspective is increasingly precise as compared with Giotto’s, in which 
perspective is not accentuated. The atmospheric veil or haze suggests the 
manner of the impressionists rather than the clear-cut spacing of Raphael 
and Perugino. Aerial perspective is shown in the blur in the objects in the 
middle distance as compared with the relative clarity of those in the fore- 
ground: this rendering of the effects of distance as we have them in actual 


396 ANALY Yo B'S WO HASPUATION Tels 


life again suggests the work of the impressionists, and further illustrates 
Masaccio’s realistic tendency. 

Light is used both in modelling to give three-dimensional character, and to 
forma design. The solidity represents an advance upon Giotto: the accentu- 
ation of light is greater, and in this respect also a new step is taken towards 
realism. Giotto’s figures are also perfectly real, in the sense of aesthetically 
and plastically convincing, but they are more other-worldly. The use of 
light to make a design and aid in unifying the composition is well illustrated 
in the fresco, St. Peter Healing the Sick. The light begins feebly at the 
right side of the picture, increases in intensity towards the left, and becomes 
concentrated on the two sitting figures at the left. These are illuminated 
as by a spot-light, but with such success that the dramatic effect, while very 
powerful, is kept free from melodrama. The larger of the two figures is 
uniformly bathed in light, while on the smaller the light is concentrated, 
with an effect approaching Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro. The light also merges 
with the color-effects, in that it enlivens the otherwise rather dull uniform 
brown of the picture. The degree of its merging is shown by the relation it 
bears to the color directly, to the color combined with it to form an atmos- 
phere which aids in space-composition, to the composition, to the modelling, 
and to the expression of subject-matter. In this last it aids both directly, 
by singling out the important figures, and indirectly, through the effect of 
dignity, mysticism, and religious feeling to which the atmosphere contributes. 
It is thus both a design in itself, and a reinforcement of every other design. 
This is what is meant by the perfect merging which constitutes plastic form 
at its best. 

The best of the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel is St. Peter Taking 
Money from Fish’s Mouth. In this there is a design of moving power and 
deeply mystic character, which depends primarily on the floating, aerial 
character of the entire picture, achieved by a perfect merging of all the plastic 
means. The effect is one of great dignity. The unity of the picture is 
balanced by infinitely varied interior designs of light, color, line, etc. The 
people seem to float in the air, though their feet are firmly planted on the 
ground. There is no lack of realism, as in Cimabue and Fra Angelico. 
Lightness of touch everywhere, gestures, simplified impressionistic drawing; 
in all a sort of supernatural effect which is pervasive and achieved by no one 
demonstrable means. 

The unification of the picture is accomplished by a merging of the groups 
of figures with the landscape through a Chinese-like use of color reminiscent 
of Giotto. The central figures are so placed that the space functions between 
them, but it is a space filled with a veil of atmosphere: This roomy, aerial 
space-composition adds greatly to the general design, without being in any 
way such an overaccentuation as Perugino’s. This picture shows the futility 
of the academic conception of a composition balanced by the use of bilaterally 
symmetrical large masses. Here there is on the right a house and two life- 
sized figures, with no compensating figures on the left side; instead, on the 


ANDREA DEL CASTAGNO 397 


left side there is a landscape of the same general color-tone as the house on 
the right (an instance of composition through the use of color), together with 
a very small kneeling figure on the extreme left. These function to give us 
the sense of balance, and the added charm on this left side of a beautifully 
achieved atmospheric landscape to increase the aesthetic satisfaction. 

The color is rather conventional and dull when compared with Giotto’s 
or Piero della Francesca’s. The drawing, as above noted with reference to 
Masaccio in general, recalls Rembrandt, Goya, and Daumier. It is formal, 
that is, less terse than in these other painters, but attains the same solidity 
as, for example, in the legs of the central figure, shown with his back towards 
the spectator and his face in profile. These legs have a monumentally solid 
character, of a more legitimate pictorial quality than the sculptural modelling 
in Michel Angelo’s painting. The gowns are filmy, though not so much so 
as in Giotto, because he did not have so light a hand and lacked Giotto’s 
jewel-like color. The light is generally well distributed, and so arranged in 
the sky and background that it gives a repeated succession of dramatic effects 
which harmonize with the dramatic actions in the group. Movement, form, 
space, solidity, expression—all are completely realized. 

This picture is as satisfactory a rendering of a story as is possible through 
the use of plastic means. Many other pictures are greater as technical accom- 
plishments, and show more skillful use of light, line, color, etc., but there 
seems to be an ability of Masaccio to express his deep feelings in terms com- 
prehensible to us. Like Giotto, Titian, Renoir, and Cézanne, he was a great 
artist because he had something to say—that is, something of universal 
human value—and because he said it in plastic terms. 


ANDREA DEL CASTAGNO 


St. Eustasius (A.C.) (attributed to School of Andrea del Castagno), central 
figure with four smaller pictures at the corners. This picture is a combina- 
tion of the usual brightness, freshness, and jewel-like quality of the fresco 
form with an added note of power. This is to be seen in every part of the 
picture, and is akin to the power in Michel Angelo’s Sistine frescoes. It is 
due in part, but only in part, to the use of darker color than is usual in fresco- 
painting. It is achieved mainly by a series of internal designs in which 
each of the elements, color, line, light and space enter in the form of a swirl. 
The swirl is larger than that of Rubens, and unlike his has no tendency to be 
dominated by color. It produces a design or pattern of far greater strength, 
dramatic and aesthetic quality, than anything of Rubens. 

The central figure in the middle part of the picture has the hardness char- 
acteristic of sculpture, although rendered in pictorial terms. The placing of 
the figure in a niche heightens this effect, but the rigid, stiff, hard quality is 
independent of the placing. The pervasive quality of power is attained by 
the use of distortions in the position and contour of legs, arms, etc., but there 


398 AN AID YS E'S? O 5 SPA Per iiGe 


is no overemphasis or overaccentuation. The painting gives the abstract 
effect of strength and vigor in terms fully plastic. 

The upper right-hand panel is too much destroyed to study in detail, but 
one feels the fresco form in its largest sense of power merged with delicacy. 
This double effect is also present in a very high degree in the upper left-hand 
panel, with its quality of a Persian miniature, with all the feeling of Chinese 
twelfth and thirteenth century painting, rhythmic, fluid use of line and space. 
Added charm arises from the fact that that which is lovely, delicate, and 
powerful is done in a small space, and by means of color. The rugged power 
of the picture is so perfectly in solution that it blends with the pervasive 
delicacy to constitute a distinctive and charming form. 

The lower right-hand panel is a fine realization of space-composition, 
each element in the group harmonizing with each other to form a unit in 
itself, with that unit in ordered relationship with every other mass, such as 
the sky and the house. The wooden character of the bull, for instance, which 
gives a static effect, is duplicated in the bearded figure on the right, and prob- 
ably serves as a foil to accentuate the movement of the centre figure. The 
influence of Masaccio on this central figure of the group is very pronounced in 
the expressive, terse line, modelled with light and shade in Masaccio’s manner, 
with the resemblance extending even to technique. Similar effects, accomplishéd 
by different means and in a very different manner, later appears in such men 
as Rembrandt, Goya, Daumier, Renoir, Glackens, and Pascin. This part of 
the picture forms a beautiful design of rhythmic lines, ordered space, charm- 
ing delicate color of great power, though not of great brightness. There is 
fine realization of perspective in the landscape. The tendency of this part 
of the picture is to simplification of means, with increased expressiveness. 
All the figures seem to be actually doing something. The effect is obtained 
partly by distortions, a fact which shows the futility of reproaching the 
modern painters for their use of similar distortions. The composite effect is 
of overwhelming reality, in spite of the absence of any effort to imitate the 
photographic rendering of flesh, texture, features, etc. The realism resembles 
Masaccio’s, as above noted. In it the varied use of shadow plays a large 
part, and throughout there is the delicacy and charm which characterized the 
previous Florentines, including Giotto. The total form of the picture is one 
of the utmost reality, power, and delicacy, accomplished by a dignified, 
balanced, simplified use of color, light, and line. 

Pieta (A.C.). This gives the same impression of moving aesthetic power, 
achieved by simple means: it is suggestive of Michel Angelo, but is without 
muscular accentuations. The source of its power is mainly the wonderful 
relations between various masses, spaces, etc. 


DOMENICO VENEZIANO 


Virgin and Child (U.). The design is interesting but formal; the colors are 
light—pink, red, and blue; the picture is finely organized, with a very expres- 


Pre nRO -DELLA FRAN CESCA 399 


sive line; the religious emotion is accentuated. Piero’s debt is clearly shown 
in the extreme right-hand figure, with its clear-cut, Greek—Van Eyck profile. 
The third dimension is realized by subtle suggestions of light and shadow with 
very faint indications of color, so subtly merged that light and shadow and 
color are scarcely distinguishable even on a close examination. Static, 
impassive quality of quiet, deep contentment is also seen as in Piero, though 
the latter’s color is infinitely more deeply felt and convincing. 


PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA 


Reception by Solomon.* Design: sharp division of two sides of picture 
each having a group of figures. No central figure or foreground object to 
serve as connecting link. Here, as in other divisions into two halves, he 
recalls Giotto, and uses similar means of unification. (See notes on Giotto.) 
Landscape is setting for group rather than a thing in itself. Quiet green and 
purplish gray—cool—give landscape function as subduing background for 
the more brightly colored figures in foreground of left group. 

Right side is picture in itself—interior of room, architectural features and 
textures of wall, marble, colored stone, etc., act as setting for a rhythmic 
group all in wonderful, quiet, but bright colors. Solomon and woman to 
his left tie up the two groups of figures in that room. Whole picture—cool, 
oh so cool, in feeling as well asin color. Piero is a new note in art in that his 
color is cool and dry. Thetrees on the left side function strongly in carrying 
the picture up to the top, so that the left side too is like a room in its com- 
positional value. In addition, these two trees with the groups at the bottom, 
in themselves of approximately equal height, and united by an undulating 
line of a hill in the middle distance, make a pyramidal mass. A central 
figure, of a child, seems to serve as the apex of a reverse pyramid, making a 
strong design. 

Piero’s space-composition is illustrated especially in the group dominated 
by the woman kneeling, in a blue robe. The figures, though close together 
in actual distance, are easily separable into units, and the space between these 
individual figures is easily felt, as a rhythm. The group is a group and not 
a jumble. 

The light is partly a general illumination, as in the group of kneeling 
women; it appears partly also by way of contrast, in which the feeling of 
shadow rather predominates, as in the figure just back of these kneeling 
women. 

Function of color in the design: in the left side of the picture, the blue 
of the sky is always judiciously tempered and tonalfied by light, so that it 
is never monotonous; these variations seem to increase the moving power 
of the color, and reinforce its service as a mass, as the bond that ties the 
picture together compositionally. It is the skillful use of that color that 
enables him to divide his picture, often sharply, into an upper and a lower 


* All of these pictures, except the last analyzed, are in the Church of San 
Francesco, Arezzo. 


400 ANALYSES 0 Py oPA NTN ts 


half, with all the action of the figures confined to the lower half. One never 
feels the two-ness or the separateness of the upper and lower parts. The 
halves go insensibly, gradually, one into the other. 

In this picture there are various resemblances to the work of Van Eyck. 
In the heads of the women there is a similar clear-cut, cameo-like definition, 
but it is done in broad simplified manner rather than with Van Eyck’s detail. 
The resemblance appears also in the treatment of the robes, the quiet and 
static movement (real nevertheless), and especially in the man in a deep red 
gown just inside the temple and beside the column in the middle of the paint- 
ing; also in Solomon’s gown, but here there is more simplification and a 
more convincing reality. There is a diaphanous, filmy, lacy, delicate quality 
of especial charm, both in this robe and in the one on the kneeling woman. 

Rescue of the Cross. The design is complex, the movement is accentu- 
ated by factitious aids, such as men using spears, but the feeling of turmoil 
is lacking. The drawing of figures is static, although ostensibly indicating 
movement. ‘There is an absence of actuality and the form functions chiefly 
as design. Again we have an instance of plastic effect realized without resort 
to illustration. The design recalls Uccello, but it is simplified and modified: 
it is Uccello in solution. The figures are often grotesque looking, but this is 
probably intentional, to give interest to the design. The small tree functions 
as central unifying mass, as does the tree in the Chinese manner in Cosimo 
Rosselli’s fresco in the Sistine chapel. The clear-cut atmosphere with subtle 
feeling of haze recalls Masaccio, but with differences. The sky is superbly 
lighted, and made interesting by variously shaped clouds, which in themselves 
constitute a design. The eye travels from the left group to the sky and back- 
ground in an oblique fashion, and comes down again to the right group form- 
ing an effective pyramidal design. The color is cool, lacking great depth, 
but it is made harmonious by the juxtaposition of various colors, yellow, red, 
blue, brown. 

The dignified, static movement is an instance of impersonal, detached, 
unemotional rendering of a story told simply and with perfect control of 
plastic means. The contrast afforded by this picture to Raphael’s softness 
and Delacroix’s overemphasis on drama, show that control of the plastic 
means makes it possible to give the essence of drama without reliance on 
overaccentuation or narrative or sentimental appeal. 

Discovery of the True Cross. In this picture Giotto’s influence is appar- 
ent, but subtly, in solution. The composition is sharply divided into right 
and left sides, that is, there is no central dominating figure, but the two sides 
are unified by the bridge and hill in the middle distance. If we consider the 
left group, we find figures finely realized, each one dignified, doing something, 
quietly dramatic, beautifully but unobtrusively spaced. The color is pleas- 
antly varied, with characteristic Piero tones. This note was afterwards 
taken over by Signorelli in the grouping of his Sistine fresco and the fresco 
in Orvieto Cathedral. 

The right group in front of temple is rhythmic, quietly dramatic, fluid, 


Pron Om DE EAE RAIN CRS CA 401 


even though gestures are sometimes stiff. The color is cool, with functions 
quite its own. Modelling of figures not obvious, but light and shade are 
nicely adjusted to that end. (Contrast with Leonardo.) The picture as a 
whole unifies, the cool color pervades and animates it throughout. Realism 
is here achieved by considerable detail but the effect is real, that is, sim- 
plified, non-photographic. The color increases in effect as one continues to 
observe: the harmonious effect is due to its uniform dryness and coolness. 
Here as usual the light reinforces the color in Piero’s unique way. 

Extreme upper left-hand corner: the village swims in a crystal-clear 
atmosphere. There are many designs made up of light in the compositional 
units, all merging into a unified design of light. The upper village is 
strongly lighted and balances well with group in front of the temple, also 
well lighted. The architectural feature on the right is a dominant mass 
which balances the village at the upper left. The key-note: cool, impersonal 
rendering of religious feeling, in the well-rendered plastic terms above noted, 
reinforced by accentuation of areas of bright color in the vital parts of the 
landscape, including the landscape back of the bridge. 

The color is not staccato, as in Fra Angelico, not merged organically as 
in Titian, not merely laid on as in Ingres; but it is merged with the figure 
in the same general manner as in Giotto, though with a less moving aesthetic 
effect. 

Exaltation of the Cross. First effect recalls Giotto by reason of its rather 
pervasive color-tone, made up of harmoniously blended units, varied in color. 
The composition is again rather sharply divided into right and left groups, 
each group rhythmic in line and color. The right group of kneeling figures 
is not very successfully spaced, so that the group in the foreground functions 
rather as a single mass, but it is so skillfully varied in color of good quality 
that it is not a disturbing element. The picture unifies somewhat in the 
manner of Giotto, with a landscape carrying one back to the horizon and up 
again to the sky in the foreground. The relation between the sky and the 
landscape, with the help of the tree and the cross, unifies the picture. The 
cross obliquely placed and the tree at right angles also form in themselves a 
design. 

The color is cool, calm, and the whole picture is dignified and simple; 
it achieves conviction by a dignified, nicely proportioned use of the plastic 
means. 

Death and Burial of Adam. Rhythmic groups rather sharply divided as 
usual, but kept together by the trees, so that starting at the left side of the 
picture we get a succession of rhythmic lines and masses and planes which 
continues up to the tree. This can be studied in itself as a rhythmic organized 
group, with the interest of the design increased by the position of bodies, 
legs, etc. Supreme mastery of functional color is shown in this particular 
group, in the lovely bright red and blue, which makes the group strongly 
colorful, though these two figures are the only ones with bright colors. Indeed 
the only other color-note in the group is a green in two of the small figures 


402 ACNGAI LAY ts i Or) TOs SAG IIN canna 


in the rear, very quiet, almost drab. Yet the color of the group is very 
powerful: it exemplifies greatness achieved by few and simple means. The 
same may be said of the group on the right side, where the central figure 
has a slight drapery of red, made into an interesting pattern. The back- 
ground functions especially as a rich, swimming atmosphere, enriched by 
lines, variegated tones, colors, light and figures in the foreground. The land- 
scape effect is itself wonderful. 

Marriage of St. Catherine (School of Piero). The primary effect-is that 
of a general fluid rhythm, made up of linear rhythms in individual figures, 
and fusing with the mottled background, which is also rhythmic. The 
general quality of the color is good, but inferior to that of the frescoes in the 
chancel, especially in the general feeling for color. The color in general is 
cool, but it is not used in the broad manner characteristic of fresco-painting. 
The composition is one-sided, that is, the tallest figure is placed to the right, but 
there is no sense of disturbance because the mottled rhythmic background 
continues above the head of the Madonna on the same line as the top of the 
tall figure. The group made up of the kneeling woman, baby, and Madonna 
is especially interesting as a composition, in which color functions strongly, 
as also inthe robe of the man. It makes up a group of figures approx- 
imately equal in height. The infant is very striking because of the unusual 
design, involving some degree of deformation, and accentuated by light. 
That light forms a pyramidal design with the heads of the mother and the 
kneeling woman as the other two elements. There is a marked degree of 
solidity, achieved by the use of light and shadow with the light greatly 
predominating. 

General summary: beautiful composition, very rhythmic; color soft, not 
garish; well-proportioned in the form of a color-design, which has only three 
notes in it, light blue, red, and white. This painting is of interest because 
of its obvious relation to the Picasso acrobatic-circus series. 

The examples of Piero della Francesca in the National Gallery are less 
successful than the Arezzo frescoes. In the following analysis the points of 
inferiority are noted. 

Joseph and Holy Family Resting (N.G.). The influence of Domenico Ven- 
eziano is shown in the kneeling figure, and of Masaccio in the three figures side 
by side, one of whom has his hand raised. Landscape is very much in perspec- 
tive, but details in rocks, trees, etc., are of the miniature type of Van Eyck, 
though with more clarity of atmosphere: there is an entire absence of Masac- 
cio’s aerial perspective. In the alternate use of light itself and dark masses, 
representing trees, grass, etc., there is a striking design, which runs from the 
centre foreground all the way to the back of the landscape in the distance. 
This design is duplicated in the much smaller design on the right side back 
of the seated figure of Joseph. The color lacks the fine convincing quality of 
the Arezzo frescoes, and light is treated more realistically—more like actual 
sunshine—than in those, in which it was rather a general lighting than a 
special use of sunlight. There is not the extremely cool detachment of the 


BOG EGEE Br 403 


Arezzo pictures, and the figures are more Greek-like in feeling. Figures in 
general are light, and both they and landscape are treated more nearly in the 
academic style of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. 


BOLTICELE! 


Destruction of Korah and Dathan and Abiram.* General design: com- 
paratively conventional means, which are less varied than in the neighboring 
picture by Signorelli. This is especially apparent in the composition, in 
which the middle ground and background are used chiefly as a setting for 
the figures; in these figures Botticelli’s beautifully expressive line is the dom- 
inant note, but there is monotony by reason of the absence of other means. 
The rhythms are linear only, instead of being reinforced by light and color. 
The middle distance and background are not only relatively functionless, as 
just noted, but in design, composition, light and color, are essentially stereo- 
typed. The light in the background is more successfully used than in most 
of Botticelli’s works, but the general effect is one of ostentation, straining after 
effect, and failing to realize it. The picture is an example of virtuosity 
without reality. : 

Moses Kills the Egyptian.* As usual with Botticelli, the design is 
founded on an obvious fluid rhythmic line, the strikingness of which is rein- 
forced by bright color. This design, however, when the method of analysis 
into elements is applied and these elements are judged in reference to the 
plastic form as a whole, is clearly defective. The composition is sharply 
divided into two parts, with strong rhythmic effects of line on the left. These 
effects are so much more striking than anything on the right that the result 
is one of utter disbalance. Botticelli attempts a compositional unification 
by the usual device of a mass (the man’s body) in the centre, plus the line of 
the hedge which extends from the foreground in an oblique direction to the 
very end of the background, but the disproportion between the two halves 
is so great, and it is visible in the use of so many of the plastic elements, that 
the conflict is only soluble by an effort which destroys aesthetic enjoyment. 

It is not even possible to regard the two parts as pictures complete in 
themselves. For example, though the left side is almost complete as a unit, 
the accentuation of line in the foreground (successful enough as an isolated 
factor) is not successfully duplicated or given an equivalent by any corres- 
ponding feature back of the stooping man in a yellow robe, so that unity 
of design is incomplete even here. The right side is uninteresting through- 
out, partly on account of its drab color; on the left side the color, in spite 
of its brightness, is flashy, tawdry, and only superficially laid on. There is 
no unity of color. 

One possible explantion for the utter lack of unity in a work by a man of 
Botticelli’s general ability in composition, is that he tried to make the picture 
as a whole function as a design made up of light and shadow, with the right 


* Sistine Chapel. 


404. AUN AIL SY SIE S00 BrarAsl ad SAN ae 


side operating as shadow and the left as light. But the plastic deficiencies 
are so great that the picture cannot be unified even by this means. 

Spring (U.). The design is pleasing, but in rather an obvious way. No effort 
is required to unify the picture as regards asymmetrical units: there is a greater 
number of figures on the left side than on the right, but the smaller number 
on the right are sufficiently emphasized to make the balance clearly even. 
The accentuatedly fluid, harmonious lines all tending in the same direction 
are obviously graceful; this rhythm is partly right-and-left, but is also rein- 
forced by corresponding rhythmic lines in the trees behind the figures, the 
trees being sufficiently few in number to make them function as individuals 
and not as a mass. The result is a facile effect, but even as a linear and 
compositional device it is banal and threadbare. 

The division of planes and spaces is good, without overaccentuation in 
either, and so is the design of light; the color, however, is drab, laid-on, and 
superficially felt. At the same time, it is sufficiently varied to give a certain 
amount of color-harmony: it is not below the level of the rest of the picture. 
The contrast of the light figures and the dark background of landscape gives a 
screen-effect resembling Fra Filippo Lippi’s, but much less successfully; these 
figures have also the feeling of stone, like Mantegna’s, but are dead compared 
to his. The general effect is that of a decoration, feebly felt plastically, and 
with an overcrowded design. It may be described as a priori beauty (in 
Bosanquet’s sense); what gives it a specious character is the resort to illus- 
trative elements (nudes, fruit, trees, the angel, the spirit of out-of-doors), 
which bring its appeal largely into the realm of sentimentality and day- 
dreaming. 

The Birth of Venus (U.). In this picture also the obvious appeal is one of 
line, but of line overaccentuated to the point of noisiness. This fact, coupled 
with the general thinness, hardness, and coldness (the effect is one of porce- © 
lain, or of an egg-shell) shows Botticelli’s aesthetic poverty. The composi- 
tion is ostensibly a simple one, that is, a central figure with counterbalancing 
masses on either side; yet these masses are so overdone in terms of linear 
decorative rhythms that they are too strident to be in keeping with a simple 
design. The use of the line itself is as always highly skilled, but it functions 
as a distraction and not as an integral part in design. 


VERROCCHIO 


Baptism of Christ, with two Angels (U.). This picture is of interest as 
showing one of the sources of Leonardo and Raphael. It is less a work of 
individual genius than a utilization of extraordinary talent; it is essentially 
academic, and the fact is interesting that Leonardo and Raphael should 
have found themselves drawn under the influence of an academician. 

The composition is conventional, but the figures are drawn in rhythmic 
lines intelligently varied to form a design. The spacing is well done, and 


LEONARDO 405 


movement is well rendered in the man with the cross, on the right side of 
the painting. The color is laid on, but successfully so. The central figure 
is expressively drawn, with incisive line, and here as in the man on the right 
the muscular accentuations, felt rather more strongly than in Signorelli, 
are nicely blended with the line to represent movement. The picture is 
successful plastically for these reasons, and also because of the successful 
use of the landscape as background for the chief action: the two elements 
blend into an organic whole; the total effect, nevertheless, is redolent with 
academicism, 

The debt of both Leonardo and Raphael is obvious. Raphael’s line is there 
in germ, though Raphael made it more fluid, incisive and unbroken in con- 
tinuity; he also discarded most of the muscular accentuations and increased 
the effect of space-composition. In the two kneeling figures on the left we 
see the birth of Raphael’s sweetness and sentimentality. We see also the 
birth of the facial expression which became Leonardo’s obsession and the 
method of using light in modelling, with a tendency towards overaccentua- 
tion of light and shadow as compared with the successful merging of the two 
in Piero della Francesca. 

Kinship with Michel Angelo appears in the use of muscular accentuations, 
but in Verrocchio this seems to be the successful employment of a trick, and 
not a genuine realization of power. 

Although this picture is fairly successful, as has been said, it has a melo- 
dramatic character when compared with the highest standards: the dramatic 
situation is not controlled by the plastic means and consequently the picture 
has some of the quality of Delacroix. In feeling for landscape it is inferior 
to those of Giotto and Piero della ‘Francesca. 


LEONARDO 


Bacchus (Z.). In this Leonardo’s use of light is to be seen at its best. As 
usual it is the basis of the design, but here it is not overdone: color and 
movement secure balance. The form of the picture is truly plastic. Even 
here, however, more color would reinforce the design, especially in the shadows, 
which tends towards dullness. Yet the picture has movement, power, con- 
viction, and represents Leonardo at his very best. 

Annunciation (U.). The actual painting is not good, but there is successful 
merging of light with the other plastic means. The light is well used to 
make a design in the background, and in the modelling of the two figures, in 
which there is no overaccentuation even in the faces. The light also rein- 
forces the color, which is here more successful than is usually the case in 
Leonardo, with a tendency towards structural effect. However, it is less 
juicy than in the Louvre version of the same subject. As a whole, in spite 
of the good design and comparatively effective execution in plastic terms, the 
picture is too formal and academic to be really moving. 


406 ANALY S PSO VCP LINCoIEN as 


Vierge aux Rochers (L.). The deep mystery of the picture is well realized, 
but the lighting is overdone, and the color is dull and muddy, especially in 
the shadows. The painting is of poor quality, and facial expression plays 
too great a part in the achievement of the effect, which is thus impure when 
compared with those of Titian or Giotto. 

Portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli (Z.). Successfully realized, but with the aid of 
accentuations in Leonardo’s characteristic manner. Compare with Bellini 
for successful realization without accentuations. 

Mona Lisa (L.). The figure is realized in fine three-dimensional quality, in 
relation to a background with perspective not overaccentuated and yet con- 
vincing, therefore harmonizing well with the figure. One feels less the ten- 
dency of Leonardo to overlighting, probably because of the design formed 
by the lighting of the hands, which is not overdone, the upper part of the 
chest, and the face, against a sky with less light than the face and chest. 
Shadows not muddy as often in Leonardo. The landscape just back of the 
figure and up to the water-line is formed of a rich color, deep and charged 
with a brownish-red, which determines its general color-value. This color is 
duplicated in the sleeves, and the folds and curves of the sleeves form a har- 
monious design with the curves in the background just noted. Yet through- 
out there is a preoccupation with light which detracts from the value, and 
the same is true of the sentimental expression of the face. 


MICHEL ANGELO 


Expulsion from Eden.* Reality is achieved by three-dimensional qualities 
in every mass and element in the picture. There is the characteristic Michel 
Angelo technique of modelling, light and shadow, but this obvious technique 
is unexceptionable because of the rhythm of both the light and the dark 
through which the modelling is done. The effect is extremely simple, but it 
is absolutely convincing by reason of the design of rhythmic elements in the 
trees, figures, masses, etc., into which light, shadow, and drawing all enter, 
reinforced by the pervasive color. Sculptural quality is obvious, but is felt 
pictorially. The effect of movement is vigorous, powerful, real, and gives 
perfect embodiment to the human drama depicted. 


RAPHAEL 


Holy Family of Francis I (L.). Good effect of design, but overemphasis of 
light and contour at the expense of the other plastic elements. The color 
is thin, dry, and does not serve any structural or organic purpose: it does 
not build up the masses or aid in unifying the composition. Hence the 
plastic quality of the picture is relatively thin and unreal. 


* Sistine Chapel. 


RAPHAEL 407 


St. Michael Crushing Satan (L.). The color is not very profoundly laid on: 
it is more than merely superficial, but the integration is not really convincing. 
The light is very well done: though accentuated in the upper part of the figure, 
there is sufficient brilliance on the shoulders of the dragon to secure balance. 
The blacks are not so rich asin Titian. Portrayal of movement is extremely 
vivid, but it tends to be flamboyant and to be worked out in too great detail, 
instead of tersely, as in the greatest draughtsmen. The composition, though 
very good, suffers from a certain amount of monotony. Its pyramidal char- 
acter, and the striking light and movement, were easily imitated, and became 
the prototype of many merely academic pictures. 

La Belle Jardiniére (L.). Pleasant but very conventional design and com- 
position. The treatment of landscape, because of the avoidance of extreme 
sharpness of line, is better than most of Raphael’s; yet the figure so over- 
whelmingly dominates the landscape that the latter seems subsidiary to such 
an extent as to have scarcely any function in the picture. The use of light 
is effective, and yet there is not, for all the photographic literalness of the 
picture, an impression of reality. The woman’s sleeve looks like a balloon, 
and there is no suggestion of an arm within it. The color, when abstracted, 
is unsuccessful by reason of its drab, gray quality, which is not relieved by 
the brilliant red of the dress. It is merely laid on: the modelling, successful 
as it is, is done solely by light and shadow, and the failure of color to func- 
tion in it, or to play any part in the organization of the three figures, gives 
a sense of unreality. The doughy, pasty, plastery effect of the Madonna, 
combined with the sentimentality of her expression, gives the impression of 
an effigy rather than of a being almost divine. 

This picture represents the perfection of academic design, with all the 
elements but color well done, but without any real flash of inspiration: tech- 
nical skill is too obvious. The design made out of light, of excellent space- 
composition, of expressive, rhythmic line, in short, practically every detail of 
the picture, is done with consummate skill, but all fall short of the very best 
in painting: there is throughout an effect of superficiality. 

The Transfiguration (V.). The obvious first effect is that of a well-built 
design in which light is the most conspicuous element, together with move- 
ment rendered by striking gestures, so coérdinated that the general tendency of 
these movements is upwards. Masses, light, and movement are all merged 
into the traditional Raphael classic design. 

Upon detailed analysis, this design falls apart. The color is totally uncon- 
vincing, of a generally drab tone, so unsuccessfully used that the light and 
color are sharply contrasted in the relative degree of their merit and there is 
no merging of the two as there is in Titian. Many incongruous elements 
militate against plastic unity, for instance, his preoccupation with Greek 
motifs in the rendering of the woman kneeling in the foreground. This is a 
classic Greek figure, taken bodily from the ancients, and it gives a dominant 
note to the foreground as a classic sculptural figure rather than as a successful 
use of the Greek tradition transferred to painting. It is sculpturesque even 


408 ANALY SES Oe RAN Tolan 


in the muscular accentuation. In Michel Angelo, the rendering of the sculp- 
turesque is such that it merges with the rest of the picture and is the principal 
means of conferring strength upon it; in Raphael, in this figure, it so domi- 
nates the foreground and arrests the attention as to produce a jarring con- 
trast with the other figures, all of which, with the exception of the boy nearby, 
are less powerfully realized. Another example of the same throwing together 
of incongruous elements is to be found in the two bearded men in blue about 
half way up on the left side of the picture, the lighting and tactile values of 
which are lifted bodily from Leonardo. 

The feeling revealed in the rendering of the different objects in the picture 
is very unequal. The kneeling young man in yellow garb under the tree in 
the upper left-hand part of the picture is a superb bit of painting in the suc- 
cessful use of line, color, drawing, and expression. This is capable of sus- 
taining the attention when analyzed into its component plastic means. It 
accentuates by contrast, however, the drab quality of most of the rest of the 
elements. Numerous groups, when abstracted and analyzed, give fairly 
satisfactory results in themselves as units. For instance, the group of men 
with the boy and woman give a well-realized pictorial effect—expressive 
movement, nice graduation of color from the light blue of the foreground to 
the deep red of the man in the background. There is fine space-composition, 
a powerful upward lift harmonizing well with the general movement. All 
these give balance to that part of the picture when considered as a unit. 
But successful as are this unit and the above-mentioned young man, these 
elements fail to achieve in the picture a plastic unity because they stand 
alone. 

The bad points are numerous. For example, the two flying figures at the 
top of the picture, good instances of Raphael’s sharp line and graceful in them- 
selves, do not give the impression of movement, in spite of being lightly 
rendered. The figure on the rock at the right is in itself beautifully done 
but imperfectly realized in its plastic elements, that is, the head functions as 
a light-shadow element in the pictorial design, and fails to attain the degree 
of reality which is achieved on the corresponding level on the left side, in 
the figure in the yellow gown already mentioned. The spotty character of 
the picture is fairly well exemplified by abstracting these figures and com- 
paring them with one another for the ultimate feeling they give us. 

In the case of color there is the same inequality. The total effect is drab, 
for the reasons already noted, especially because of the metallic and super- 
ficial quality. This is not true of the gown of the figure at the extreme right, 
with his hand raised, in which the color has a quality of brightness and an 
organic function. As against this, the gown on the figure at the extreme 
left of the picture, with raised hand, is also red, but it is absolutely dry, 
superficial, and without structural function. 

In general, as a design, the picture unifies plastically because of the suc- 
cessful use of light, which functions as a subsidiary design, reinforced by the 
movements already analyzed, so that the light in itself arrests the attention 


RAPHAEL 409 


in spite of the sharp break caused by the rock in the middle, and the obvi- 
ously different character of the subject-matter in the upper and lower halves. 
The light functions as a pyramid which starts at the bottom of the picture, 
and in the foreground extends upward with various accentuations in intensity, 
to the brilliant light at the apex in which Jesus is bathed. The design of 
this light is reinforced by corresponding upward movement. 

The picture is overdramatic, not, as one preoccupied with literary concerns 
would suppose, by reason of the subject and the dramatic attitudes of almost 
all the figures, but because these dramatic values are superficially rendered in 
plastic terms: it is overexpressive. Compare the total effect with that of a 
picture by Michel Angelo or El Greco, equally dramatic in subject-matter, 
but in which the plastic elements are successfully blended and made to be 
the means of carrying with conviction the human elements which the painter 
intends to portray. Nor does the picture fail in unity because of the abrupt 
division between the two halves, as an academician would say: the unity 
suffers because of the discordant passages above noted. 

In the final analysis, the picture is rather tawdry in spite of its good features. 
The Greek figure in the foreground, especially, stands out like a sore thumb. 

Entombment (B.). Design pleasing, but analysis reveals that it is superfi- 
cial, tawdry, overdramatic, in spite of bright color, and charming landscape. 
There is a lack of conviction through the excess of drama. The face of the 
old man with the beard is solid, dignified, and completely realized, by virtue 
of the proper use of plastic means, the freedom from overlighting, the angle at 
which the head joins the body, the design of face and hair. In contrast, the 
two heads composing the arc at the left are superficially done, the head at the 
middle is unconvincing, and in the one to the left of the arc there is descent 
into utter virtuosity. Like many of Raphael’s pictures, this contains many 
passages of beautiful painting, and superb space-composition. In contrast, 
there is also bad color, cheap sentiment, and obvious display of skill. Asa 
result, while effective as a composition and while containing a superb land- 
scape, the picture is good only as a design. 

Here as usual the classic influence determines the treatment of a subject 
to which it is inappropriate. The man at the right holding a cloth under 
Christ’s knees, and the woman kneeling at the extreme right, are merely 
transformed Greek figures. 

Madonna del Baldacchino (P.). Among Raphael’s religious pictures, this is 
the most successful discussed here. The composition is formal, with complete 
bilateral symmetry. The figures in general are realized with more strength 
than in the vast majority of Raphael’s pictures. Here as usual expressive- 
ness tends towards sentimentality, but it is not so overloaded as sometimes. 
There is a waxy character in the faces and limbs of the individuals, giving 
them the ghostliness which is characteristic of Raphael; here, however, there 
is also a tendency towards reddish-brown which suggests an imitation by 
Raphael of the Bellini-Titian manner. This does lend an additional strength 
and solidity; it is, however, essentially specious, successful only superficially. 


29 


410 ANAT YW SE S90 herbal NAA NCGS 


Portrait of Maddalena Doni (P.). This is well organized in the details of 
the figure and the relation of the figure to the background. It is an obvious 
imitation of Mona Lisa, but succeeds only in getting a superficial version of 
that picture, with increased sentimentality. The light is well distributed, but 
less well than in the prototype, the design in the landscape is less interesting, 
and there is a drab, muddy quality about the blues in the sleeves of the gown. 
There is an awkward tendency towards simplification, and in general the 
control of the various means is less complete than in Leonardo’s picture. 

La Donna Velata (P.). This is the best of the Raphaels analyzed. It is 
fairly successful as an organic whole of comparatively difficult achievement, 
because the background is gray, the scarf of the same color, and the dress more 
gray than white. The painting owes much of its plastic quality to the success- 
ful use of decoration in the right sleeve, which consists of a succession of folds, 
its edges bound with a golden-brown braid. This sleeve, together with the 
hand, which is also golden-brown, makes an interesting design in lines, tones; 
and masses. This seems to be the most successful use of the means at 
Raphael's disposal in getting a plastic unit. Even here, with all the strength, 
there is a tendency toward softness. 

Madonna with the Blue Diadem (L.). Incolor this is better than most of 
Raphael’s pictures, though the background is rather murky. The placing of 
the figure is good, the wall in the middle distance is very well painted, and the 
total composition is highly effective. 

Ansidei Madonna (N.G.). In this there is the usual sugariness in the 
Madonna and child, and the same excess of expression in the other figures. 
The perspective and space composition is everywhere good, but as usual the 
picture suffers from eclecticism. The composition balances in a formal aca- 
demic way, but without any of the enrichment of the formal design by many 
and original plastic elements, as in the Giorgione Madonna at Castelfranco: 
what effect it has is due to expression and not to its properly pictorial quality. 


ALBERTINELLI 


Christ Appearing to Magdalen (Z.). In this picture all the elements of the 
Florentine tradition are to be found—landscape, perspective, color, figure- 
painting, composition, etc. The landscape appears at first to be dissociated 
from the figures, but closer inspection reveals that the unification is successful. 
It has a silvery blue in the background that renders the infinity of distance 
and gives a peculiar mystic feeling which enhances the religious human story. 
The figures are clearly intent, doing something, that is, they are expressive in 
the best sense. 

The color is very good, the effect arising largely from the contrast of the 
deep colors in the foreground with the silvers and blues of the background. 
This contrast is not sudden, but is developed by a gradation of tones in the 
middle distance. While these colors are not felt structurally, there is a fairly 


COSIMO TURA 4Il 


successful merging of the color with the form, and the general rich blending 
of the colors into a color-atmosphere suggests the Venetians. Light, like color, 
is used subtly to harmonize with the subdued tone of the picture, and to con- 
tribute to the form of the painting, which is that of delicacy. There are 
faults, such as the painting of stuffs, but these are comparatively trivial, and 
as a whole the picture is one of the finest flowerings of the Italian genius. 


POLLAIUOLO 


Hercules Overcoming the Hydra; Hercules Crushing Antaeus (U.). The 
picture on the right shows the grotesque note to which Piero di Cosimo, 
Goya and Daumier owe much. It is not so successfully rendered in terms 
of solidity as Daumier’s, and it falls short of Goya in simplicity and in subtle 
psychological penetratingness. 

In the picture on the left the curved lines, forming an intricate, note- 
worthy design suggest Raphael’s similar use of the same design. The line 
is not so incisive as Raphael’s, but more varied in its quality of expressing 
strength by the obvious muscular accentuations which are to be found also 
in Signorelli and Michel Angelo, and in other painters down to Rouault. This 
is perhaps the original source of this device. 

In short, the obvious interest of these pictures is the ability to render 
drama in plastic terms, so that the subject-matter and pictorial technique 
are perfectly codrdinated. 


COSIMO TURA 


St. Dominic (U.). This is a striking illustration of the ability to achieve 
reality by the creation of plastic form with the greatest economy of means. 
It consists of a brown face and a black cloak against a background originally 
gold but now faded to a mottled brown. The figure has a great effect of solid- 
ity, realized by contrast of light and shadow and with muscular accentuation 
paramount. The picture owes its design to the contrast between the black- 
coated figure and the background. The pattern in the background is accentu- 
ated by another design made up of similar use of color and light and detail in 
the centre of the body (hands, cuffs, etc.); a final reinforcing element in the 
general design is the duplication of this last element in the face, by use of the 
same means. In spite of the similarity of the general tones of the background 
and face, the face stands out in bold relief. 

Throughout the picture, the feeling of El Greco is very much in evidence. 
The solidity of the face, accomplished through the use of tone, suggests 
Rembrandt and Daumier, though it is a more skeletal solidity. The solidity 
of the background suggests a rock as modelled by Cézanne, though Cézanne’s 
is the more real; it is also suggestive of similar effects in Lorenzo Lotto, but 
is more solid. 


412 ANALYSE SiO eer AD Ne uNvers 


This picture shows the unimportance of subject-matter: the dol eful, over 
pious expression, strongly accentuated by the plastic means above noted, is 
satisfactory to anyone, however far from pious or doleful, who is able to feel 
the presence of plastic form. 

Pieta (Z.). The design in this is based upon muscular accentuations, like 
those of Signorelli and Michel Angelo. The dead Christ is so powerfully 
represented that it serves as a central mass, which is convincing in itself, 
and around which the accentuations in the faces and hands of the other 
figures organize themselves into a rhythmic unit of powerful effect. The 
use of means is more convincing than in Signorelli, and the design as a whole 
is equal to those of Michel Angelo in strength, though the color is not so 
good. Compared with Michel Angelo’s, it is an interesting illustration of the 
use by different men of the same means to get different effects. This is 
one of the very great achievements in the history of painting. 


PERUGINO 


Combat of Love and Chastity (Z.). Thecolors are not deeply felt nor much 
used organizally, but are delicate, with a tendency towards the Fra Angelico 
color-form, and this use of rather feeble, light, comparatively laid-on color 
blends well with the lacy trees, the general lightness of the picture, and gives 
a sense of delicacy, reinforced by the rhythm and the very successful space- 
composition. The picture is essentially fairy-like in its delicacy, and superior 
to his religious compositions, which are formulated, academic, soft and 
sentimental. 


GHIRLANDAIO 


Frescoes in Santa Maria Novella Church, Florence. The color is bad. 
There is a reliance on technical tricks, as in the painting of the folds in the 
gowns and other decorative materials, and on a pageant-like subject-matter. 
The aesthetic offensive is not only plastic but also moral: it offends our intel- 
ligence that such an important work should have been attempted by so limited 
a use of technical means. 


SIGNORELLI 


Adoration of the Magi (Z.). There is a very successful use of movement, 
which tends from the bottom of the picture towards the top, extending up 
to the limit of the canvas. It is obtained by muscular accentuations and by 
light, and is carried above the figures by the columns. Here as always, 
Signorelli falls short of the conviction of muscular power by his inability to 
use light and shadow in a harmonious way with those muscular accentuations, 
so that there is not a good design formed. 


jedeyD eunsis 


Lib ased ‘sisAjeuy 


T]@IOUSIS 





(413 ) 





Giovanni Bellini Academy, Venice 


Analysis, page 420 


( 414)) 





Raphael Louvre 


Analysis, page 407 


(415 ) 





( 416 ) 





Sistine Chapel 


Cosimo Rosselli 


Analysis, page 418 


SIGNORELLI 417 


Moses as a Law-giver.* The design is overpowering, consisting primarily 
of varied, animated movement, with the dignity secured by avoidance of 
overemphatic means. The movement is a succession of small rhythms in 
the main group in the foreground. A suggested feeling of anatomical accentu- 
ation in the bodies adds to and participates in this movement, and gives to 
the bodies a solidity which is a suggestion rather than an actual reality. 
The picture is obviously a step in the direction of the three-dimensional, and 
so an anticipation of Michel Angelo. The movement is wavy, modulated, 
and constantly changed, with the general direction horizontal. It is designed 
and varied by a series of vertical rhythms, made up of lines in the figures, 
clothing, etc.; the interplay of these vertical planes with the wavy ones is 
the chief characteristic of the design. This movement in the foreground is 
continued in the rock in the centre of the picture and is varied by a number of 
elements, figures, trees, etc. 

A rather striking feature of the picture is the definite design formed by 
the light, nicely adjusted to the other elements, so that it is not overaccentu- 
ated, either in the actual illumination of the whole picture, or in the general 
design of light as above noted. This general effect is difficult to achieve 
because of numerous dark colors (greens, etc.) such as one finds, usually used 
badly, in Botticelli. 

The group of figures in the left background is a picture in itself. It is a 
fine composition, completely organized, which could be taken out and framed; 
it would stand as a plastic unit for the same reason that the whole picture is 
a plastic unit. It would even have the added attraction of a better use of 
light, in every respect above noted, than that of the picture asa whole. The 
masterly use of this left background as a unit in composition contributing 
so largely as a pictorial element to the picture in general, is at once noticeable 
when it is seen in relation to the corresponding unit on the right side of the 
picture. Here a landscape devoid of figures functions also as a picture in 
itself, this time as an uncomplicated landscape in which light, trees, masses, 
and lines function as a rhythmic unit, less actively than the unit on the left 
side, but placidly and subtly. In the left group, the spacing and varied posi- 
tions of each figure give the sense of rhythm, movement, all integrated with 
light in an extremely dignified, satisfying manner. The balance of these two 
background units is a fine example of satisfying variety. 

The color is comparatively lacking in brightness and structural function. 
(The yellow gown with folds at the right is an exception to this.) A number 
of elements only indicated, like the man’s legs at extreme right, which are 
absolutely flat, give a sense of incompleteness in certain details of the picture. 
Nevertheless, the picture does function colorfully because all colors are 
rhythmically used, blended in a masterful way with light, and varied with 
a succession of rhythms constituting the lines of the figures. That is, rhythmic 
use of color organizes the composition. 

This picture challenges comparison with a Botticelli because of the obvious 
rhythmic quality of the lines, which in this case, however, are not used osten- 


* Sistine Chapel. 


418 ACNGA EY 5. EA Sane a ee Pe aa cra 


tatiously at the expense of design, color, etc., and because of the successful 
use of those dark colors which Botticelli used inharmoniously. We get a 
sense of color-harmony here in spite of the absence of any brilliant, imme- 
diately arresting colors or color-overtones as in the Venetians, because of the 
successful merging of what color there is with the rest of the plastic elements 
in the design, in such a way that the general color-harmony is felt to be a 
properly proportioned plastic element in the ensemble. 

In point of proper adjustment of plastic elements in a plastic unity, this 
picture ranks very high. In spite of many and diverse objects, it is not 
overcrowded. The painter’s mastery consists in merging these many ele- 
ments and episodes into an organic, plastic whole. The picture is less 
appealing than it would be if the color were effective everywhere; however, 
the deadening of particular areas entailed is forgotten in the general effect 
of the picture. The deadening is probably a less serious defect because of the 
tendency of these various dead elements to form in themselves a design. 


COSIMO ROSSELLI 


Pharaoh’s Destruction in the Red Sea.* Here again there is a complete 
picture on each side of the centre, the two really hanging together. It illus- 
trates Rosselli’s characteristic use of plastic means to give a moving, power- 
ful drama in which the control of the means avoids the cheapness of Delacroix. 
The feeling for landscape in the background is akin to that of the Chinese, 
and in a measure to that of Giotto, and is done so effectively that the moving 
force of the background operates in the design to keep together the picture 
which in the foreground would otherwise tend to fall apart. 

This unifying function of the background is revealed by the obviously 
Chinese character of the tree just back of the figures in the foreground and to 
the left of the centre. From that tree the eye is carried irresistibly to the 
powerful background of clouds: this background, in its quietly unobtrusive 
Chinese way, functions quite as strongly as an element of design as do the 
lines and masses which, in the right foreground, depict the dramatic but 
restrained story of the drowning, and with which the group in the left fore- 
ground are directly connected. 


MANTEGNA 


Parnassus (L.), Calvary (L.). Mantegna is essentially an illustrator. His 
stories are told in terms of the Roman antique, and the illustration is not 
properly welded into art. 

In these pictures the illustration is conveyed with marvellous ability by 
means of sharp line. The design is good, as is the composition, with archi- 


* Sistine Chapel. 


BELLINI 419 


tectural features playing an important part in both, as do the figures, but 
these are felt as though they were made of stone. The landscape is a mere 
incident. Line is used not only illustratively but with fine rhythmic effect. 
The color has slight structural function, and there is deficient sense of 
color-harmony. (This is not due to the dark green, which is used by many 
painters, from Giorgione to Courbet, in combination with other and brighter 
colors, with no offense to the sense of harmony.) The color, in other words, 
when abstracted, seems unsatisfactory, and it is necessary to look to the other 
elements, design, composition, and linear rhythm, to find satisfaction. This 
destroys the effect of unity. This applies especially to ‘‘Calvary”’ and in lesser 
measure to ‘‘Parnassus;’’ in the latter, the color when abstracted does yield 
some satisfaction, but this is feeble because of its lack of quality and its 
superficial, non-organic character. 

The Agony in the Garden (N.G.). In this picture, Mantegna shows that he 
is capable of using color; instead of throwing the composition out of gear, as 
in the Louvre pictures, it is here employed to reinforce the composition, both 
as a whole and in its elements. The integral part that color plays in the 
design makes this a better picture than the preceding examples of Mantegna’s 
work. 


VIVARINI 


Madonna Enthroned with Saints (A.V.). Clear-cut, sharp line is used 
chiefly as a means of literal expression of sentiment, but it is combined also 
in linear rhythms, which tend to alternate duplications around a centrally 
composed group and give the effect rather of monotony, unrelieved by color. 
The color is without individual distinction, either in the quality of the indi- 
vidual colors or their effect in combination. The light is well organized to 
form design, but there is no reinforcement by color. The expression of grovel- 
ling pietism is of the fourteenth and fifteenth century Italians. What dis- 
tinction he has he owes to the academic traditions common to all the fifteenth 
century Sienese and Florentines. He is essentially an academician, a master 
of expressive line, with no feeling for color, and little general imagination. 


GIOVANNI BELLINI 


Sacred Conversation (P.). Design very striking, and sustains analysis. 
The chief element in it is the relation of the light to dark masses, and the gen- 
eral lighting is superb. There is perfect unity between the figures and the 
background, with the landscape deeply felt, though it is still primarily an 
incident in the telling of the human story. 

The picture is clearly a transition from the classic painters represented by 
Mantegna to the full flower of the Venetians, and its characteristics may be 
treated in detail by showing what they came from and what they anticipated. 


420 ANALYSE S40 Pas RAUN igs 


The figures and character of color recall Mantegna. The figures show, 
however, a departure from the antique line, by which a naive modification 
of naturalism makes them more interesting (see the two figures to the right 
of the picture). While Mantegna’s color is only dark, and displeasing because 
of its lack of harmony with neighboring colors, also often dead, stone-like 
and superficial, with little part to play in the design, Bellini’s clearly shows 
the origin of the Venetian glow, and the dark greens and browns are used in 
connection with other colors, making a total harmony which functions in the 
design and gives the picture its dominant and individual character. The 
Venetian atmosphere is clearly apparent, but is largely confined to certain 
areas: it is diminished and not all-pervasive. The rocks in the picture are 
solid: they are real rocks, made up of light and color. The man with 
the gown leaning on the balcony a little to the left of the centre shows the 
inspiration of Tintoretto. The origin of the Venetian tradition is clearly 
evident also in the architectural details in the back, in rocks that rise like 
mountains, and in the glow; in the group of figures in the foreground, we see 
a possible anticipation of Carpaccio’s later pageant-like outdoor life of ordinary 
people. The source of Bellini’s inspiration was the Italian painters of the 
Fourteenth Century, as shown by the three women who form a triangular 
group on the left. There is a suggestion of Masaccio in the tendency to 
render perspective faithfully, but there is not the realistic blurring of the 
outlines of objects as they recede in distance. 

Madonna of the Alberetti (A.V.).. This is obviously the source of much of 
Raphael’s work with Madonnas. Here there is a slight tendency towards 
sweetness but not sentimentality: the sweetness does not as in Raphael 
compromise dignity and reality. The background is brilliantly lighted on 
either side of the yellowish-green screen, giving a decidedly novel note in the 
use of color and one far superior to Raphael’s stereotyped use of light and land- 
scape for his Madonnas. The color isa rich blue of unusual quality, and the 
red sleeve is varied with light in such a way that we can see the origin of 
Tintoretto. Leonardo’s debt to Bellini is apparent both in drawing and in 
the use of light not only as forming a design but for purposes of modelling. In 
Bellini the accentuation of light as a means of modelling is less noticeable, and 
the light is so distributed throughout the mass that the result is accomplished 
without drawing attention to the means—one of the sure signs of great artistry. 

Madonna in Vestry of I Frari Church, Venice. In this picture again the 
Madonna and Child are realized with dignity and strength in plastic terms, 
and this plastic effect instead of being spoiled by sentimentality of expression 
is heightened by the facial expression, which is strong and not soft. . The two 
angels below the Madonna are similarly free from the expression of sancti- 
moniousness and other-worldliness which is the stock formula for angels: they 
are two happy children of this world. In the dome over the Madonna the 
Venetian glow is forecasted. Light, color, line, make up a strong design, 
which goes well with the figures of mother and child. None of the colors are 
strong, but rather quiet, and very few of them are structurally used, though 


GARPACCIO 421 


the tendency is there in the gown of the Madonna. This blue robe of the 
Madonna, and the sleeve and underneath dress which is perceptible only at 
the neck, at the middle of the figure, and at the very bottom, form a strong 
subsidiary design which serves as a sort of background to set off the light. In 
the panel to the left, the heads of the two saints show a structural use of color 
and anticipate Tintoretto. On the right, the faces and hands of the two 
saints are already quite Titian-like, and have a fairly well-developed Venetian 
glow. In the robes of the saints, however, the color is rather like that of 
Vivarini, both in its laid-on character, and in its use in connection with the 
folds of the gowns. The picture as a whole is charming in its dignity, reality, 
and great simplicity: it is realized plastically, and that makes the subject- 
matter realistic and moving aesthetically. 


CARPACCIO 


Dream of St. Ursula (A.V.). The effect is one of deeply felt, all-pervasive, 
charming gentleness and peace. It owes its value to the realization of these 
qualities in a well-organized design, repeated in subsidiary designs, all in good 
plastic terms. The centre of interest is the sleeping figure, well brought out 
by the use of light: this use, concentrated, specialized, and focalized, is not 
to be confused with objectionable accentuation of light: it is a means of 
realizing the spirit of the scene and composing the design. The picture is 
rich in color-harmonies, accentuated by broad surfaces of color rather than 
by many colors, and this harmony is brought about by both quality of color 
and its juxtaposition with broad surfaces of shadow. The Venetian glow is 
foreseen here, but the effect is more silvery, lighter, clear-cut, without the 
general reddish overtones which enter into the full-fledged glow. 

The composition is balanced, but not in the academic fashion of arrange- 
ment of masses about a central mass. The arrangement is orderly and there 
is a total balance, but it is rather a progression from one object to another, 
heightened by line, light, and color. The fluid rhythms extend well into the 
third dimension, and the effect of space composition is admirable, comparing 
well with that of Perugino: there is an airiness, a roominess about the picture, 
in which the arrangement of the masses is highly effective. 

All these effects are augmented by the wonderfully realized feeling of 
textures, especially in the bed-covers. The charm of these textures is akin 
to that of Vermeer, but is less worked out in minute detail, and so more free 
from the suggestion of a preoccupation, which is often noticeable in Vermeer. 
These textures also give an effect akin to that in Peter de Hooch, and this 
interior quality is heightened by the use of appropriate architectural features 
composed of lines of varying length, never long enough to produce monotony, 
but always meeting other lines either at right angles or with curves, in such 
a way as to produce the impression of a balance of lines. This feeling for 
place, combined with a velvety softness in the surfaces of the objects, con- 


30 


422 ASN VALLAY SiS Pome en LAN aN a 


tributes powerfully to the spirit of the picture, which is also increased by the 
subsidiary designs, such as the pattern made by the head of the figure, the 
hand, and the pillow. All these things so completely give the essence of the 
situation that the actual story, with its interest of sentiment, is superfluous 
as an aesthetic element. 

The textural effects in this picture suggests the Dutch and Flemish, but the 
use of them is unmistakably Italian. There is a lightness of line and color, a 
delicacy, and an ability to utilize space, that the Flemish rarely possessed. 

Carpaccio is a striking proof of the absurdity of all statements that realistic 
treatment of textiles, stuffs, etc., constitutes a false note in painting. It may 
of course become such, but when utilized as here, with due subordination to 
general design and the plastic quality of the scene depicted, it adds strongly 
to the aesthetic and properly pictorial effect. 


GIORGIONE 


Madonna with St. George and St. Francis.* The design of this picture is 
easily grasped because of its almost exact bilateral symmetry. The Madonna 
and saints are set against a background of airy lightness, so convincing that 
if regarded in isolation it suggests that the primary purpose of the artist 
was to paint a landscape. It is, however, seen to be first and foremost a 
setting for the group as soon as we look at the group itself. The three figures 
make a pleasing pyramid, which is increased in interest by the medallion in 
the tapestry over the throne, the texture of which is painted in great detail. 

Aside from the consummate skill of the use of all the elements of painting, 
this picture owes its power to the multitude of designs which are subordinated 
to the general design, and which give it a variety and subtlety which are 
likely to escape the observer’s attention on a first glance. Each side of the 
landscape is itself a design in point of line, color and light, setting off the 
trees, tower, mountain; each has the feeling of the idyllic charm and also the 
majesty of landscape in general, though this effect is varied in the two sides. 
The left side has a rather yellow, sunny glamor, while the right side is silvery 
and lighter, though the golden effect extends far enough into it to give to 
both sides this golden atmosphere. ‘Though as yet lighter than it became in 
Giorgione’s later pictures, especially in his ‘‘Concert Champétre,”’ it is already 
his individual and unmistakable note, which is so largely responsible for his 
lyric, arcadian charm. Bellini’s influence is clearly apparent in this land- 
scape, though the light is more generally diffused, has no especial tendency 
to form intricate light-design, and has a more silvery effect than Bellini’s glow. 

The Madonna is graceful in posture, line and expression, and the colors red 
and blue are particularly interesting in the design made up of the folds of 
the gown. The infant is equally light and graceful, and its lines form an 


* Castelfranco. 


GIORGIONE 423 


interesting design when taken by themselves. This design is a component 
of the larger design formed by the Madonna, and the still larger design made 
up of the throne and each of the upper and successive parts, arranged 
in deepened planes towards the background—all this reinforced by the 
design of the medallion, the throne-cloth with the pattern-note of the design 
repeated in general tendency. There is still an additional design in the 
textile back of the throne, and the textile upon which the altar-cloth rests 
with its rich stripes of red, yellow, and blue repeated in symmetrical alterna- 
tions bilaterally, with the vertical lines arranged in four successive groups 
of varying height, fulness and breadth. All these give a monumental char- 
acter to the throne: the abstract monumental character is realized in plastic 
terms as is the processional quality in the Padua Giotto already discussed. 
This is set off by the two figures in the foreground, which in themselves are 
monumental, with the same ease, grace, and dignity of posture to be seen in 
the Madonna, with whom they make up the obvious pyramidal composition 
of the picture. The monk’s figure forms in itself a very simple design made 
up of folds in the cowl, position of hands, etc., which gives a picturesque 
and varied element of balance in the total composition. All this is strongly 
contributed to by the checker-board pattern in the floor, of alternate white 
and grayish-blue squares. This functions as an element in a design of light 
and shade, giving variety to the whole picture: the figures and the red wall 
as shade, and the light on the floor together with that on the Madonna and 
Child and the extension of light in the landscape, form a contrast which 
enters powerfully into the plastic form of the picture. 

The influences revealed by the figures are clearly those of the Thirteenth 
and Fourteenth Centuries, with the effect of Bellini apparent in the Madonna 
herself: there is a reminiscence of the Tintoretto-like figures of the two saints 
in the left of the Bellini altar-piece in the church of I Frari. The knight 
with his armor is obviously inspired by both Bellini and Mantegna, but only 
in general style, and with such obvious additions in achievement of reality 
that a new form is constituted, with the classic influences present only in 
solution. 

The color is rich, harmonious and well illuminated, and it ties the compo- 
sitional units together into an organic whole. The Giorgionesque glow is 
clearly present, and its function as a balancing mass in design is to be seen on 
the left side of the landscape, where it balances the mountain, light blue in color 
and slightly mottled with light on the right side. The light is used through- 
out with powerful functional effect, both as illumination and in design: in 
particular, it forms an inverted pyramid the base of which is in the sky and 
the apex in the medallion; the interior of this pyramid is enriched by color, 
mass, details of textures, etc., above noted. This pyramid functions in 
relation to the light flooded upon the floor; there is a further enrichment 
in the light on the plateau extending back from the red wall, so that this 
total design of the inverted pyramid is really a three-dimensional cone with 


424 ANALYSES OF PAINTINGS 


the surface nearest us cut away so that we can look into an interior of rich 
colors, patterned lines, etc. 

Perspective is very pronounced, but like light is well merged in the general 
design, so that it is not at all an overaccentuation. Possibly about the legs 
of the knight there is a suggestion of overemphasis; elsewhere all is done 
perfectly, with an effectiveness which may be judged if we look at the altar- 
cloth with the medallion, which seems to hang out from the bottom of the 
throne. The effect of the space-composition, together with that of the 
modelling in light and shadow, yields a convincing impression of reality to 
all parts of the picture. 

The total effect of the picture is one of gentleness, delicacy, grace, peace, 
majesty, with landscape and figures perfectly in accord in the achievement 
of the effect, to which the story itself is only a detail. There is a synthesis 
of the traditions, plus a greater realization of solidity, grace, and reality to 
make up a new form. It is conventional in the sense of general design, but 
the variation and enrichment of this design revealed by a detailed analysis 
lead to forgetfulness of the conventionality. The picture suffers by com- 
parison only with the ‘‘Concert Champétre,” in which light and color are even 
more perfectly blended, and achieve a reality even more convincing. This is 
an extremely fine distinction and must not be understood as detracting from 
the reality of the figures in the present painting. 

Concert Champétre (L.). This picture is surely one of the greatest single 
achievements in the history of painting. 

The composition cannot be analyzed adequately from the standpoint of 
a central mass with balancing right and left masses as chief compositional 
intention, yet the arrangements of objects would lend themselves to a com- 
position of that kind. The painting is held together by the rhythmic use of 
line, light, color, mass, space, bathed in a charming, all-pervasive glow. The 
use of color structurally is perfect. The light seems natural rather than 
accentuated, yet it forms designs similar to those which are the main theme 
of Bellini’s ‘‘Sacred Conversation.’’ On the right, the background functions 
as a balancing mass to the rock and tree at the left; it is a picture in itself; 
it is a group in relation to the central group, to the standing nude, to the 
group of trees, to the castle in the middle distance, and to the design formed 
by the long streak of light in the clouds. This little group of men and animals 
approaches a study in chiaroscuro and has much of the feeling of a Rembrandt. 

Nothing in this picture is overdone. There is no preoccupation with 
light-design, such as might be charged against Bellini’s ‘‘Sacred Conversa- 
tion,’’ nor is there anything academic in the color, composition, or any use 
made of any of the plastic means. It has infinite variety in all these respects 
yet the composite effect is simple. There seems to be no element that can 
be criticized plastically at the expense of any other element. This consti- 
tutes its charm, arcadian quality, power, splendor, majesty, deep peace, and 
mystic effect deep but satisfying, and justifiable because the painting has 





Giorgione Castelfranco 


Analysis, page 422 


(425 ) 





Raphael Vatican 


Analysis, page 407 


( 426 ) 

















Titian I Frari, Venice 


Analysis, page 429 


( 427 ) 





Cranach Uffizi 


Analysis, page 440 


( 428 ) 


eis AGAIN 429 


sufficient objective reference to which the mystical emotion can be rationally 
attached. 

Every spot on which the eye rests gives satisfaction and carries the eye 
on to other spots equally restful and satisfying. 


TITIAN 


The Assumption.* This picture illustrates a supremely successful solution 
of plastic problems on a very large scale. It is a composition with figures on 
three levels, with unequal numbers of figures in each group, all, however, 
perfectly unified and containing design within design, diversifying the effect 
and making the total unity proportionately more impressive. Since the basic 
problem is essentially the same as that of the Raphael ‘‘Transfiguration,”’ 
and since the two pictures present a striking contrast in their use of plastic 
means, it will be useful to compare the two in the course of this analysis. 
The point of paramount interest is the relation of the subsidiary designs to 
the principal design. 

The basic problem is that of making the transition from earth to heaven 
through the intermediation of a central mass. This is made up of many 
details, with a general upward tendency of the movement towards God 
and the angel at the top of the picture. In the Raphael the central mass 
is sharply divided from the lower level by a projection which, as we have seen, 
does not really make the picture disjointed. In the Titian there is no such 
projection, so that the lower and middle units are on the same plane: this 
makes it possible to grasp and appreciate with less difficulty the general 
design. 

The masses on the different levels are all realized in characteristically 
Titian fashion, but with varying degrees of conviction. The technique is 
most typically Titian’s in the central unit, made up of the Madonna and 
angels, but even in this there is not uniformity: the angels are the more 
organic in their coloring. 

In the lower group, though the color is structurally used and is pervasive 
and successful in itself, it is here made subsidiary to the essentially dramatic 
design. This is very successfully accomplished in terms of line, mass, space 
in fine orderly arrangement. The direction of the rhythmic movement so 
attained is varied. It starts on each side of the picture and culminates in 
the centre with the pointing upward of the two arms. This central point 
fixes our attention very strongly by reason of the attractive design made by 
the head of the central figure of the group in relation to the two arms. These 
are placed in two different positions and are rather broadly drawn, some- 
what in the manner of Masaccio, but with a departure from realism for the 
sake of better suggesting the upward trend of the picture. Broad drawing 
is characteristic of nearly all the figures in this group: they are treated only 
here and there in terms of the typical Titian color, as for example in the 


* T Frari Church, Venice. 


430 AN ALLOY i) Sa-O FoR OASTAN] I> LAIN Gres 


mass near the extreme left of the picture, with bulging white sleeve, and the 
solid, colorfully structural, characteristic Titian head and gown of the figure 
on the extreme right. . In these, three-dimensional color, though perceptible, 
is less successfully realized than is usual with Titian. The two figures gowned 
in red immediately adjoining the figures just noted function chiefly as color- 
surfaces. This was probably intentional, for two reasons: first, to provide 
the inner part of a frame for the centre of the group (the other two figures 
serving as the outer part of the frame); second, to fill in the lower parts of a 
conventional pyramid-design, the apex of which is the Virgin at the top. 
The composite effect of this lower group grows more powerful the longer it 
is observed: it forms a strong, rhythmic, varied, dramatic group which is 
also simple and dignified. 

The central group forms a fine composition in itself, made up of a series 
of semicircular planes, each occupied by angels, clouds, etc. These are so 
used in connection with perspective as to give the sense of space and depth. 
The effect of depth, however, is unobtrusive, and the whole central compo- 
sition is made the point of chief interest by the solid, structural use of color 
in the three-dimensional forms in the various planes. The Virgin, who 
serves as the central mass in this composition, makes a design interesting in 
itself from the standpoint of variety achieved by line, color, light and shadows. 
This design gets additional force from being obviously a repetition, with 
modifications, of the design in the lower mass formed by the head and arms 
of the central figures, as above noted. Similarly, this design reinforces that 
in the lower level. The left side of the central mass is itself a modified 
pyramidal design, made unconventional in two ways: first, by having the 
apex of the pyramid obliquely to the left, instead of straight up and down; 
second, by being enriched by the various positions of the arms, legs, heads 
garments, etc., in the group. The planes here function very actively in 
carrying the pyramid not only upward but decidedly backward, giving it 
the effect of a three-dimensional mass which serves as a sort of frame to 
accentuate the central compositional mass of the Virgin. 

The right side of this middle group appears simplified in point of number 
of individual figures so that the first clearly perceptible effect is a sense of 
disturbance in its relation to the unit on the left. But this is another instance 
of the general type of picturesqueness noted earlier, by which symmetry is 
achieved by variety. Instead of finding an exact duplication, we find a 
composite form which resolves itself upon close inspection into a series of 
interesting colors and lines, lights and shadows, which resemble in general 
a three-dimensional rock, but which are dimmed angels, and which serve as 
the centre of a subsidiary composition. This is an inverted pyramid, the 
apex of which is the two colorfully structural angels, the left base an angel 
less strongly done, the right base two heads in the more solid Titian style, 
but broadly treated. This contrast between the oblique pyramid on the 
left which achieves depth by the use of a modified perspective, and this 
imverted pyramid on the right which seems more simple as regards number 


TITIAN 431 


of figures, etc., but is equally active as a three-dimensional mass, is a triumph 
of difficult compositional unity through variety, in what to a superficial view 
is a disjoined composition. 

The upper compositional group of the angel and God owes its value to a 
design of line and only slightly indicated color, which tends towards the 
bizarre but is in reality a repetition of the pyramidal note in the other two 
levels. In this case, the apex of the pyramid is God’s head and the base 
two small heads of angels; here again our demand for balance is met by the 
mass formed by the angel (in itself an attractive design); once more, we 
get in this whole upper composition the effect of three-dimensional quality 
broadly indicated and achieved by the use of numerous planes, which gives 
the effect of a solid, deep compositional group. 

The total design is formed by the relation of the three levels to one another, 
each supporting that above it, and with the middle level appropriately con- 
taining the largest number of plastic elements, and so most strongly soliciting 
the attention. The duplication and rhythm of minor designs in these differ- 
ent levels, already commented upon, is greatly reinforced by the deep, con- 
vincing background of sky and atmosphere against which they are set. 
Between the lower and middle level this sky is calmly assertive as a dividing 
line of contrasting colors, silver and blue, which functions both to give dis- 
tinction to the lower level and to unite it to that above. Above, the sky 
extends from the back of the Virgin to the very top of the picture, and con- 
tains an enveloping atmosphere with many of the traits of the Venetian glow. 
It is, however, done more lightly, more in the manner of Bellini, and serves 
as a fitting apex and climax to the diffusion of the upper two groups, with a 
beautifully, nicely tempered, strongly dramatic light, the execution of which 
is entirely free from virtuosity. This light is framed in by a deepening 
towards the characteristic Titian red which, in a semicircular form, frames in 
the whole upper part of the picture, going from the very top to the upper 
part of the second compositional group on either side. This form, approach- 
ing the circle, adds to the rhythm of the group and is so proportioned and 
tempered with light and color that it gives the sense of infinity attained in 
the supreme degree only by painters of the rank of Titian and Rembrandt. 
This illuminated sky contrasts well with the blue silvery sky below, and 
these together form a pyramidal design of light which is in itself a supreme 
triumph of the use of plastic means. 

This picture is infinitely superior to the Raphael ‘‘Transfiguration.”’ Its 
effect of depth, perspective, solidity, is achieved at every point by perfectly 
restrained use of the means required, and its unity is perfect: the light, color, 
and rhythms which tie it together never stand out as tricks. The color, in 
spite of its compositional function, is not bright, and the glow is subdued; the 
light works subtly, not, as in Raphael, obviously and violently; and the 
same is true of the rhythm of line and mass over which the light plays. There 
is complete freedom from either softness or exaggeration of expression and 
all the parts of the canvas are done with mastery: there are no examples of 


432 ANS DD YISE S73 Or eer TN ale aa 


good painting here and bad painting there such as were pointed out in the 
Raphael, or of different and incompatible traditions standing out in the 
separate areas of the picture. There is perfect unity and infinite variety, 
so incorporated with the values of the subject that the picture admits of any 
desired amount of symbolic interpretation without detriment to its plastic 
value. The value of the picture is shown by the degree to which it sustains 
analysis: at first it is not very striking, but as the rhythm and harmony of 
its parts are brought to light the satisfaction increases until it reaches the 
point of complete mystic absorption. If one is interested in the story that 
interest is intensified by the telling of it in plastic terms. But for the deep, 
human values appreciated in intense even though abstract forms, the plas- 
tic qualities of the painting are all-sufficient, and make the narrative of no 
importance. 

Man with the Glove (L.). The design is extremely simple and correspond- 
ingly difficult to do. The figure is almost of the same color and light-value as 
the background, nevertheless it stands out. The face functions as color but as 
a sombre color: the effect is largely constructed out of light, but the color is 
strongly structural. The line is extremely simple: practically the only dis- 
tinct lines are those of the features. The design is made of light, focussed 
on face, hands, shirt-front and glove, all very simply done. All parts of the 
lighted design, including the slightly defined mass at the lower right-hand 
corner, play a fully satisfactory part in the picture, and even the very dark 
background unifies as a mass contrasting with the dark coat. The contrast 
between the dark masses is very subtle, but there is never lack of the necessary 
distinction to assure each an independent role. All elements are merged 
perfectly, and are scarcely perceptible as individual elements. This is a 
supreme instance of the art that conceals art. 

Supper at Emmaus (L.). The color in this picture is rich but varied, 
and the action, characteristically and harmoniously organized, is rendered by 
highly expressive drawing. The modelling is adequate, and the Venetian glow 
is well realized. Each person is doing something, the actions being varied 
but effectively united in a single ‘‘plot.’’ The spacing is very effective. The 
figures on the two sides of Christ at the centre are not equal, but there is no 
sense of disbalance because from whatever point one selects the eye follows 
the graceful line of the figures, a line broken in continuity by their varying 
heights, and meeting other lines coming in various directions from every 
part of those figures. All these lines are fluid, graceful, smooth, harmonious. 
The varied line in the table, broken by the folds of the table-cloth, relieves 
an otherwise blank expanse. The color of this table-cloth is rich, and the 
folds in it form a rhythm repeated in the lines in Christ’s coat. The line 
formed by the table as a whole parallels the upper line which begins in the 
man seated at the right side of the canvas, runs up to his neck, over his head, 
to Christ, and on through the group at the left. The use of perspective to 
achieve deep space under the table is admirably yet unobtrusively done. 
The whole rhythmic design of color, space, planes, without emphasis of 


PLS EAN 433 


facial expression or gesture to yield an adventitious effect, constitutes a form 
holding in solution the deepest human and mystical values. The impression 
is one of rhythm, harmony, grace, deep peace, profound satisfaction. 

Entombment (L.). The design is very arresting at first glance. It is due 
to a series of graceful lines, curved from each side, which come to a perfect 
balance in the central meeting-point. This oval design, made up of the 
figures, is contributed to by the spacing, light, and colors, the latter being 
deep, rich, structurally used, and set off by light to form a subsidiary design 
which rhythmically duplicates the general design. Again we have restraint 
in gestures and facial expressions, with deep human and religious feeling. 
It is similar to but more complex than Giotto’s ‘‘Entombment.”’ 

Christ Crowned with Thorns (L.). This shows Titian’s occasional fascina- 
tion by Leonardo’s accentuation of light. The light design is much stronger 
than usual, so that the feeling in the central bearded figure reminds one con- 
siderably of Leonardo, though the richer color, used with better structural 
effect, makes the figure more convincing than it would be in Leonardo. The 
action is also overaccentuated. The lances at various angles make an interest- 
ing design which tends to frame in the struggling group. The high lights in 
themselves also form an interesting design. 

Jupiter and Antiope (Z.). The cupid at the top serves to unify a picture 
which would otherwise have a tendency to be divided into two parts by the 
full-sized tree in the foreground. From the group at either side of the picture, 
the eye is carried to the well-lighted cupid at the top of the pyramid, and then 
down to the group at the opposite side. The landscape, though well merged 
with the figures, remains an incident, a means of setting off the action. What 
is described is essentially the life of people living in a pleasant landscape. 
The spirit of place is superbly grasped, with typical Venetian glow. The 
influence of classical antiquity is slight—that is, the tendency is towards 
realism, full of a rich, deeply felt poetry. 

Sacred and Profane Love (B.). Superb design, with Venetian glow com- 
paratively absent. The general effect of the color is of a rather sombre but har- 
monious richness, in which there is little suffusion. The organic use of color 
in the nude brings out the relatively less successful use of it in the draperies. 
There is a dignified, balanced use of expressive line in the draperies and 
the figures, which is striking but not dominant as in Botticelli. The tree is 
well used to divide the picture and throw shadows which enhance the general 
design. The picture is suffused with light, which in its gradations from the 
source to the other side of the picture also enhances the design and gives a 
general effect of luminousness. It is also skillfully used to form shadows 
which lend an effect of contrast to the light without ever falling into muddi- 
ness. The general light-design is marvellous, and it blends admirably with 
the secondary design of shadows, to which the masses in the centre are 
subsidiary. 

The nude is fairly successful as a realized significant form. It resembles 
Tintoretto’s nudes, but is less strong; it also challenges comparison with 


3I 


434 ANALYSES OF PAINTINGS 


Giorgione’s, as does the clothed figure. The general spirit is the same, but 
the effect of lightness combined with strength is suggested rather than realized. 
However, the influence of Giorgione is very apparent. The shape and the 
size of the picture would tend towards a fragmentary treatment, but the 
effect of fragmentariness is avoided by the extensive landscape, richly varied 
in units and total treatment. 

St. John the Baptist (A.V.). This shows how even the mighty fall before 
Leonardo’s example in light and line. It lacks Titian’s solidity and tends 
toward Verrocchio’s stilted drama, which was later taken over and refined 
by Leonardo. 

Bacchus and Ariadne (N.G.). The general effect of the picture is less pow- 
erful and dignified than that of Titian’s best works. This is due to the lesser 
simplicity of means, the relative lack of unity and the diminished conviction 
in the use of color as a compositional and structural element. The landscape 
in the background has a rather metallic quality, hard and obvious, and with- 
out the poetic charm and the grandeur of the best Titians. As a realization 
of complete rhythmic design, representing and giving the effect of motion, 
it is very successful; this is due to lines indicating gesture, folds of robes, 
girdles, scarfs, etc., all entering harmoniously into the masses. 

However, with all this highly successful use of line and representation of 
movement, there is a sense of things lacking in most of the figures, with the 
result that the picture fails really to unify. For instance, the tiger and 
leopards seem superficial, lacking solidity. The landscape lacks glow. Spac- 
ing is less successfully obtained, and in the general composition there is an 
absence of balance in that there is no adequate mass, movement, color, in 
the left side of the canvas to make up for the drama and detailed representa- 
tion on the right. The concentration on the right would not be so much 
felt if the landscape on the left, going away into the distance, were better 
realized in the points noted above. There is a superficial, obviously repre- 
sentative character in the sky, all the way up to the top of the canvas, which 
seems perfunctory, uninspired, rather than an expression of feeling. This 
weakness is not universal: parts of the canvas, for instance the robe under 
the jug in the left foreground, are superbly realized. The central figures, 
the left figure, all of these are marvels of color, line, fluidity, grace, charm, 
reality, from the standpoint of design and feeling. However, the technique is 
often exaggerated. Noteworthy instances are the use of light and of intensi- 
fied gesture, even though these might be said to be intrinsic to the nature of the 
subject: Titian at his best is subtle in these respects and adapts and merges 
his means into a composite, satisfying whole. The indifferent quality is again 
illustrated in the figure just to the right of Bacchus and the cupid, the gown 
of which is, so far as color is concerned, an unreal, unsolid affair. The color 
is not exactly merely laid on, but it is not structural, as it is in Titian and 
Tintoretto at their best; the feeling, both in color-tone and solidity, is that of 
a good Poussin. To appreciate this, we need only compare this robe with 
that either of Bacchus or of Ariadne, and even these as color-units are by no 


TINTORETTO 435 


means so solid as Titian’s very best work—for instance, the gowns of the 
bending figures at right and left in the ‘‘Entombment.’’ The leopards are 
for the most part merely painted animals, lacking in the feeling of reality, 
though this is not true of the feeling in the back feet. The picture as a whole 
suffers from the same sort of unevenness noted in Raphael’s ‘‘ Transfiguration.”’ 

Christ and Magdalen (N.G.). This picture shows the influence of Giorgione 
in practically every point, plus the brown color, tinged with green and varied 
with light, characteristic of Bellini. The landscape lacks the subtle blended 
grandeur and charm to be seen even in the early Giorgione. The colors are 
Giorgione’s, but there is not that successful juxtaposition and distinction and 
distribution by which Giorgione achieves color-composition in his canvases. 
Compared with Giorgione, there is a lightness, a lack of solidity, in every phase 
of the picture, and similarly a resort to expression in the telling of the story of 
which Giorgione would not have been guilty. Still, there is an approach to his 
arcadian quality, though it is felt to be lighter, less convincing, less charming, 
and obtained by means which are to a great extent somebody else’s (for 
example, Bellini’s, as above noted). In spite of all these defects, the picture 
is superb in many details, and as a whole. The kneeling figure is light and 
graceful in quality, and the design superb. The landscape here is finer in feel- 
ing and especially in compositional value, than in ‘‘Bacchus and Ariadne,” 
and it functions in its deep distance to the left of the canvas as a balancing 
mass to the other masses in the picture. The robe on the Christ is beauti- 
fully rendered, achieving reality by color and design. Plastically, this is a 
better picture than ‘‘ Bacchus and Ariadne.”’ 

Perseus and Andromeda (W.). There is a contrast here between the power 
and depth which constitutes Tintoretto’s note, apparent in the falling figure 
and the dragon (both of these very strong and very Tintorettoesque in power 
and color), and the highly lighted nude which, while solid, is felt to fall short 
of Titian’s best in three-dimensional weight. This nude, in contrast to 
Tintoretto’s figures, both in form and in handling of color, is rendered so 
largely by means of light, is so graceful, with such a fluid rhythmic lightness, 
that it seems like a stronger Correggio. The whole background, however, is 
in the style of Tintoretto. The falling figure is much more complicated than 
the nude, but the very successful balance between the two nevertheless gives 
a wonderful rhythmic effect. The solidity of this nude grows upon inspec- 
tion, and shows that Titian was not wholly dependent upon his deep color 
to attain three-dimensional form. There is very little red in the picture, and 
the Venetian glow, ordinarily obtained by overtones of red, is here achieved, 
though somewhat less successfully, by dark greens, together with blues inter- 
spersed with light, which give in connection with the greens a deep silvery 
glow. 


TINTORETTO 


Suzanne at the Bath (L). Tintoretto’s form appears especially in the treat- 
ment of the drapery and of the grasses and landscape in the right background, 


436 AUNACEAY.S oO amr AN aN 


in the spacing, and in the ability to render dark areas without a fall into 
the muddiness and dulness of which Leonardo was characteristically guilty. 
The composition is typically Tintoretto, in the arrangement of the chief 
figure at one side of the canvas, without loss of perfect balance. This figure 
stands out in bright light, with vigorously executed modelling, but there is 
no overaccentuation, because the light is integrated with the color, and is 
balanced by the light-design in the picture as a whole. 

Portrait of the Artist (L.). The tendency to distortion and characteristic 
swirl are clearly marked. The primary design is in the face, and is accom- 
plished by light, by which the swellings and hollows are brought out: this 
design is rhythmically repeated in the beard. The distortion lends interest 
to the design, and aids in the realization of the third dimension and of tactile 
values. The sum total of the distortions is considerable. There is a sub- 
sidiary design in the lines of the coat, the lines down the front of the coat, 
and the folds of the sleeves. The figure is well separated from the background, 
partly by gradations of tone, partly by contrast in color, partly by the illumi- 
nation. The indication of the third dimension, though subtle, is less subtle 
than in Titian’s ‘‘Man with the Glove,” and there is not the same economy 
of means in the painting as a whole. It is, however, a perfect example of 
the fusion of a richly decorative form in the structural form to make a strong 
plastic whole. 

Crucifixion (A.V.). In this picture, the powerful Tintoretto effect is 
attained by terse expressive drawing, muscular accentuation, and organic use 
of color. The drama is repeated in all the units, so that the picture unifies 
very wellasa whole. Every part of the canvasisactive. The swirl is repeated 
on varying scales and the rhythmic effect of the picture is present in all the 
groups contained in it. These rhythmic units unite in a beautiful harmony, 
and there is in the entire picture a perfect equilibrium of all factors. We get 
the deep human values of drama anda powerfully stirred people: the total 
form is movement, power itself. 

Madonna with Saints (A.V.). The color is strong and organically com- 
posed. The ordered spacing (the sequence of line and mass) is done with 
extreme simplicity and great effect. The power of the picture resides pri- 
marily in the rhythmic groups, one flowing towards the right and the other 
towards the left, centred by rhythmic masses. The compositional centre 
is obtained by unusual means, the figures tending towards the left instead of 
being upright. No single figure stands out as it would in a portrait, but 
all are merged in the general effect. The landscape, of silvery light blues 
and dark greens, forms in itself a fine composition, with a dramatic sky and 
natural scene to serve as a background upon which the rhythmic groups that 
tell the story are projected. The unity between this background and these 
groups is perfect. 

Paradise (L.). The colors, blue, silver, ivory, with Tintoretto’s peculiar 
reddish-brown, are as harmoniously rhythmic in themselves as the figures, the 
groups, the clouds. The painting is a harmony of color, mass, line, move- 


PAOLO VERONESE 437 


ment, all merged in a whirl of fluid movement. All these elements are observ- 
able in the individual groups entering into the general design, which is won- 
deifully rich, varied, moving, and mystical in quality. This is one of the 
greatest paintings in existence. 

Origin of the Milky Way (N.G.). This is less powerful in the structural 
use of color than Tintoretto’s best work. The design is unusual, having the 
general effect of the spokes of a wheel radiating from the child’s body in the 
centre. 

St. George and the Dragon (N.G.). Strong, powerful drama and move- 
ment. Realized in ordered, measured rhythm of line, color, mass. The color- 
harmony pervades and unifies the design. 


PAOLO VERONESE 


Feast in the House of Levi (A.V.). This is a powerful, real picture, in 
which the spirit of pageantry is achieved in a degree approaching grandeur. 
The space-composition is admirably done, without the exaggeration which 
mars Perugino’s fresco in the Sistine Chapel. The compositional rhythms 
are varied and highly effective: the space is utilized to fill the canvas and 
leave no voids, with attendant impression of infinity or vastness. Each figure 
is real, and the realization is due to the use of plastic means. 

Jupiter Foudroyant les Crimes (L.). The excessively turbulent motion is 
unsuccessful in itself, and is too reminiscent of Raphael: the design does not 
seem to be Paolo’s own, and as a second-hand version of a form which is in 
itself inadequate when judged by the highest standards, it is doubly unsatis- 
factory. This is a departure from the usual standards of reality, quality, 
and personal expressiveness characteristic of Paolo Veronese. 

Flight from Sodom (L.). The narrative—a flight from a burning city—is 
perfectly merged in the plastic form. Lines, gestures, colors, all flow from 
the fire. The design is fundamentally movement and rhythm, but because 
of the entirely adequate use of color, of light, of space, of modelling, this 
movement does not constitute an overaccentuation. What stands out 
superlatively is the drawing, which is only in part accomplished by line, 
though that element is strongly present: it differs from Botticelli’s line by 
virtue of its integration with all the other qualities of painting. The render- 
ing of surfaces shows the artist at his best: it is even more firm, lustrous, 
and brilliant than in the general run of his pictures. 


LORENZO LOTTO 


St. Jerome (Z.). The color is moderately well used as organic structure in 
the rocks and the foliage of the central tree, but in general the merging of 
color with structure is incomplete, and there is a resultant loss of solidity 
and conviction. The color itself, though it is not of the usual Venetian 
quality, is rather pleasing in the harmonies between the dark hues. The 


438 PONCA YES TSO OT oe ALON NC 


picture owes its moving power to its attractive design, in which masses, lines, 
and colors, are used successfully to produce a harmony. Both the design and 
the color give a modern note to it: the color and the realistic treatment of 
detail foreshadow Courbet, and there is also a very modern feeling for land- 
scape as something interesting in its own right, and not as simply stage prop- 
erty for setting off the central figure. 


PIETRO LONGHI 


Lesson in Dancing (A.V.). This is better as a genre picture, in the Dutch 
style, than most of the seventeenth century Dutch pictures. The effect is 
attained by a fairly successful use of color structurally, and by a simplification 
of design away from photographic literalism, such that a stiffness and rigidity 
is given the figures. In this the design is made more interesting, and a kind 
of naivete and charm secured. The picture gives the feeling of the spirit 
of place and tells the story in good plastic terms: the story is convincing 
from the plastic standpoint, and there is also a suggestion of humor in it, 
though this is vague and kept in the background. Chardin strongly resembles 
Pietro Longhi. The spirit is that of the Eighteenth Century, but expressed 
in Venetian terms. The Venetian tradition is so successfully modified and 
put in solution that a new plastic form is achieved, of a very personal and 
intime character. 


CANALETTO 


The Grand Canal, the Salute (Z.). Canaletto caught the Venetian glow 
and also Claude’s feeling for the grandeur and majesty of landscape. He had 
a feeling for space-composition and for architectural detail and lights and 
shadows; also a sense of panorama. These things together constitute Cana- 
letto’s form. He is an important man because he told his story in plastic 
terms. He is not of the greatest importance because nothing he says, only 
his manner of saying it, indicates a powerful imagination, and his plastic 
means are not original, but are a fusion of elements from others, as above 
noted. 


GUARDI 


The Doge Embarking on the Bucentaur (L.). One does not find in Guardi 
the tendency towards the reddish overtones which constitute the Vene- 
tian glow, but a clear-cut, silvery atmosphere. His debt to the earlier 
Venetians is best shown in certain colors, which are found at their best in 
Titian and Tintoretto. In him they are diluted in intensity, in glow, in 
structural quality. His sense of space-composition is equal to that of 


CORREGGIO 439 


Raphael or Perugino. He has a sense of the picturesque which is in itself 
beautiful, but he rendered it with considerable detail, and with such com- 
mand of small-area painting that he can indicate an enormous out-door 
space, including the multitudinous details that fill that space, such as gon- 
dolas, buildings, etc., all in a small canvas. Space-composition, clarity of 
atmosphere, ability to simplify objects by broad painting and yet give them 
a sense of reality—these things, in addition to the personality which he puts 
in his work, are what make him an important painter. He catches the spirit 
of place, tells about the details of it, and sets in that place the story in quite 
a personal manner. Guardi’s form is as distinctive, as much an individual 
form, as Titian’s, though of course infinitely less important. 


CORREGGIO 


Jupiter and Antiope (Z.). The light is overemphasized and the flow of line 
is so accentuated as to stand out in relative isolation. Highly competent 
workmanship in the execution of what is attempted, however, and an ample 
residue of other values, prevent the disbalance from destroying the genuinely 
aesthetic character of the picture. There is, however, an indication of Correg- 
gio’s basically cheap strain, and also of the flabbiness of his figures. 

Danaé (B.). This picture shows Correggio’s mastery of his means. The 
effective use of line in giving grace to the nude, both in general and as an 
element of the design, is an instance of the rhythmic effect both within each 
figure and throughout the picture as a whole. While strong color is absent, 
the total effect is that of color well used to give form, a use that approaches 
the Titian-Tintoretto tradition. The use of light figures against a dark 
background is successful—a modified chiaroscuro; in general, light is used as 
a motive with rare success. The background is well varied to avoid monotony, 
and the rhythmic line in the draperies contributes to the general effect of 
rhythm. It repeats the line of the nude and the angel at the foot of the 
bed. Observed from many angles, these lines in the draperies, figures, etc., 
may be combined in various ways to form designs, all of which unify with 
the general design of light. The picture suggests Tintoretto in the head 
and body of the nude, though it is, from the point of view of color or of 
general merging of the elements, less successfully realized in a three-dimen- 
sional form. It shows that a tendency to sweetness is compatible with a 
successful use of the plastic means. 


GUIDO RENI 


Dejaneira (L.). This is valuable as a composition, but the composition is 
taken from Raphael, and has become an exercise in virtuosity. The move- 


440 ANA DY St Se OR aE Arlene en 


ment is overdone, the color is thin and perfunctory, there is no real synthesis 
of elements into a harmonious whole, and attenuation of aesthetic character 
has gone almost to the limit. 


THE CARRACCI 


Diana and Calisto (L.). Spacing, movement, rhythm, and figure-painting 
are good; there is, however, no quality in the rendering of the landscape, which 
looks as though it were painted on rock. As usual, there is the circumambient 
atmosphere of the Venetians, the light-modelling of Leonardo, and the softness 
of Raphael. 

Le Deluge (L.). In this the swirling movement and rhythm of Paolo 
Veronese’s ‘‘Flight from Sodom”’ are made a fetich of. They are not set off 
by the richness of color and distinction of design which ballast the movement 
in the prototype. 

La Chasse (L.). The atmosphere, sky, and trees are from Titian. The 
shadows, however, are uninteresting by reason of their excessive darkness, 
and the picture is not properly unified. The total effect is melodramatic: 
the figures are not well drawn and the treatment of them is superficial, in 
spite of the interest of the design as a whole. 

The Apparition of the Virgin to St. Catherine and St. Luke (Z.). The 
composition and movement are taken from Raphael, the landscape is Venetian, 
and the painting of stuffs follows that of Tintoretto. 

These paintings are perfect examples of eclectism—a skilled use of Renais- 
sance technique minus personal feeling. 


CRANACH 


Eve (U.). The first effect is of an extraordinarily pleasing design, simple, 
naive, and colorful, in spite of the almost complete absence of bright colors 
or tone. The line is fluid, graceful, and though sharply defined it is always 
felt as a part of the object, never as line in itself, as in Botticelli. This is 
especially evident in the line of the body against the background: the line 
seems to be, not only literally but in feeling, the place where the body comes 
to an end, instead of an extraneous factor separating the two. The general 
design is so made up that every part of the canvas is active. The background 
is alive and gives the effect of an infinite recession. 

The figure is the determining factor in the design and through it plastic 
unity is attained. It is completely surrounded by space. It has a tendency 
towards naturalism, but it is idealized in its general effect, contrasting in 
that respect with the work of Courbet or Manet. It has only a suggestion 
of the feeling of flesh, with the exception of one of the knees, which has some 
of the quality of natural flesh: this note is introduced in the interest of the 
design. Modelling is achieved by the use of light and shadow, but very 


P.OQUSS DN 441 


subtly, and with avoidance of monotony. Within the figure itself there are 
an infinite number of appealing designs, such as the flowing hair seen through 
the quasi-triangular space between the left arm and the body; the unusual 
pattern of the crossed legs from the hips to the floor; the hair streaming down 
from the shoulder, which is a series of waves beginning at the neck, running 
down to the elbow and meeting the breast; the olive-branch in the left hand 
in relation to the leg back of it; the right hand with an apple, obviously 
Egyptian in feeling; a design formed by the position of the right and left 
arms by which the fingers are given an expressive character; the serpent in 
its coils around the branch giving in concentrated and complete form the 
rhythms indicated by the fluent lines in the body, etc. 

Nothing in the picture is naturalistic: the apples are idealized and made 
into objects-in-themselves, not apples, which function as masses and colors 
harmonizing with the dark foreground and the brightly lighted nude. What 
is distinctive in the picture, to repeat, is the use of the nude as the focus 
for the design as a whole and in all respects. 


POUSSIN 


The Arcadian Shepherds (L.). The composition of this picture resembles 
that of Titian’s ‘‘Entombment,” but is less varied, less unified, and in general 
less moving. The rhythm, in line, in movement, and in color, is admirably 
done. The lighting is bright, but excessive emphasis is avoided by the dis- 
tribution of light over the background as well as the foreground. The oval 
which frames in the central masses is made of light, making an effective 
design. The color is not unlike that of the Venetians though it is less rich. 
The same deficiency is to be discovered also in the weight or solidity of the 
figures; but this toning down of solidity fits well with the lightness of the 
whole plastic form. 

Holy Family (L.). On theright there is a beginning of genuine landscape, 
that is, of nature interesting for itself. The spirit of place is well realized, and 
as something more than background, though it is still primarily background. 
The line is quite as expressive as in Degas: all of the figures are doing some- 
thing, but sometimes overintently, so that the effect becomes theatrical. In 
the painting of the draperies there is a reminiscence of Tintoretto and Paolo 
Veronese. The feeling of form and light are Florentine, though with a sug- 
gestion of the Venetian glow, all of them given French form, especially in 
the heightened dynamic quality, which is clearly something other than the 
Venetian repose. In manner of representing action the influence is primarily 
that of Raphael’s line, though the light is not overaccentuated, and its con- 
tribution to the design is properly integrated with that of the other elements. 
The color, also, is more Venetian than Raphaelesque. 

Les Aveugles de Jérico (L.). Not conventionally balanced, but varied as in 
the Venetians. The feeling is classic, expressed by the means contributed by 


442 ANALYSES OF PAINTINGS 


all the schools of the Renaissance. The Venetian glow, due to the use of 
color-overtones, is present. The drawing is that of Raphael, though with 
modifications from Michel Angelo, whose modelling makes the Raphaelesque 
line more convincing. All these Renaissance means are perfectly merged in 
the general effect. The figures are all acting characteristically, but the 
coérdination of the line with other factors makes the movement and action 
more effective than in Raphael. The space-composition is essentially that 
of Raphael; the design is suggestive of Titian’s ‘‘Entombment,” and there is 
also the Venetian ability to make color function as a rhythmic and structural 
element as well as mere decoration or rendering of local qualities. The color, 
however, is more subdued than in the Venetians, and though it preserves its 
richness the impression created is rather one of delicacy than of effulgence. 
The color also contributes greatly to the movement. 

The use of line to give unity and variety to the design is very striking. 
Christ’s hand on the woman’s head and hers on his girdle, like the table-cloth 
in Titian’s ‘‘Supper at Emmaus,” aid in tying the picture together. The 
other extended arms continue this binding-process, with added rhythm and 
variety. These lines, however, not only tie the picture together, but also 
add interest to the detail of the masses. As in Bellini, and much in the 
same manner, the play of light and shadow makes up a subsidiary design. 
The folds of the cloaks, as in Tintoretto, add to this interweaving of the 
elements of design, and heighten the effect of a wealth of variety fused in a 
rhythmic and harmonious unity. 

The architectural background functions in much the same way as in 
Carpaccio and Masaccio, and the dark shadows cast by the building further 
contribute to the general design, as do the sequences of light falling upon the 
various masses. 

Triumph of Flora (Z.). In this there is a dearth of quality when compared 
with the best Poussins. The use of light is flashy, and the figures are very 
reminiscent of Uccello and Tintoretto. The rhythmic effects of line are good. 

Judgment of Solomon (L.). The composition is like that of Raphael, and 
very conventional. The effects of line, especially in the arm of the woman 
who is pointing, are well done but are very Raphaelesque, with his charac- 
teristic overaccentuation and undistinguished color. The excessive linear 
emphasis is accompanied by an effect of inadequate modelling. 

Orfeo and Eurydice (L.). The color is dryer than that which Poussin 
usually employs to harmonize with his designs. The aerial perspective and 
space-composition are very well done, but the light is overdramatized. 

Rape of the Sabines (Z.). The Venetian influence is to be observed in this 
in the metallic, clear-cut color of Tintoretto and Veronese.. The movement is 
very well done in spite of overdramatization, which is in a measure required 
by the subject. There is some difficulty, however, in gathering into a single 
composition the large number of figures. Yet each group is a harmonious, 
rhythmic unit, and the separate groups unite in a harmonious, rhythmic 
design. 


UNKNOWN FLEMING 443 


The Adulteress before Christ (L.). The integration of the group as a whole 
with the background is very well done, as is the background itself. Within 
the group the synthesis is carried out by the use of line, but less successfully 
than elsewhere. The space-composition is as always very successful, with 
the relation of objects in the foreground, the middle distance, and the back- 
ground very clearly indicated. The figures are light, but this lightness is 
essential for Poussin’s form, which is that of a harmony of every possible 
effect, a harmony with which too great a development in any one respect 
would have interfered. 

Le Paradis Terrestre (L.). This is less classic and more naturalistic than 
most of Poussin’s pictures: the landscape effect is very modern in feeling and 
treatment. Even in this picture, though the landscape effect proper is really 
approached as it is not ordinarily in Poussin, the human story remains the 
most interesting feature by reason of the marvellous design in the two figures. 
This is simple, rhythmic, and well unified: it fits perfectly into the natural 
background, and is reinforced by the second design in the angel in the cloud, 
with which it is inseparably connected by plastic relations. The use of light 
and line in the picture as a whole is very effective. From the point of view 
of subject-matter, the attempt to render religious feeling by means so super- 
ficial as the introduction of the angel is childish, but the plastic integration of 
the two elements, natural and supernatural, is perfect, and is done with 
unobtrusive use of plastic means. This is his most successful landscape: 
the Barbizon painters show their indebtedness to it, as does Rousseau le 
Douanier in the rendering of foliage. 

Funeral of Phocion (L.). The first glance reveals the landscape, with 
human figures apparently only incidental. But this is essentially a figure- 
painting, and it is the landscape that is only incidental. All the masses, 
the trees, towers, columns, walls, houses, function compositionally as figures. 

Cephalus and Aurora (N.G.). There is a precious enamel quality to many 
Poussins, especially this fine porcelain-like one. Note Poussin’s debt to the 
Venetians in the landscape in this picture. Poussin’s profiles and figures 
are decidedly Greek in many cases, but differ from those of Mantegna in not 
looking so much like stone statues. 


UNKNOWN FLEMING 


Portrait of Maria Bonciani (U.). The force, simplicity, and dignity of the 
Flemings, as contrasted with the delicacy of the Italians, are well illustrated. 
There is the characteristic Flemish treatment of stuffs. The handling of 
the subject is very similar to that of Domencio Veneziano, with superior 
use of the plastic means in every respect but one, viz., concealment, by merg- 
ing, of the light-and-shadow effect by which the third dimension is realized. 
This relatively greater obviousness of means is not entirely a disadvantage 
to the Fleming, because the lighting is an important factor in the design, 


444 ANALYSES OF PAINTINGS 


and the face in consequence requires its high lighting on one side and deep 
shadow on the other. Judged by naturalistic standards, the large head and 
hand represent a distortion, but the distortion is obviously used to heighten 
the interest of the design. 


MEMLING 


Virgin Enthroned, with Two Angels (U.). Owing probably to the dark color 
and solidity of detail, the religious feeling of the Italians is here expressed 
with less delicacy but more conviction. The angel on the right, compared with | 
a similar figure by Leonardo, Botticelli or Ghirlandaio, seems more charac- 
teristically angelic, more truly devout. The figure on the left is also more 
firm, human, appealing, dignified, than are the figures by the men just men- 
tioned. There is a tendency towards miniature painting similar to that in 
Van Eyck. 

St. Benedict (U.). Thesuccessful relations of book, landscape, house, figure, 
window-sill, all form an organic whole which is real, appealing, and moving. 
Light bathes the whole picture, but does so naturally, without attracting 
our attention as light. An infinite variety of plastic means are employed 
with great skill. Modelling with light and shade blended with color gives a 
feeling of reality to the figure. The picture suffers in comparison with the 
‘‘Man with the Glove” because of lesser simplicity of means; in comparison 
with Raphael’s ‘‘Baldassare Castiglione,’’ it is better painted, has a finer 
feeling for color values, and achieves a dignified, solid character far more 
appealingly human than the sentimental softness which may be seen even 
in Raphael’s best work. 

Triptych, St. Sebastian, Resurrection, Ascension (L.). Characteristically 
Flemish in the feeling of color, tone, and general treatment. The drawing 
stands between the incisive line of Raphael and the swirl of Rubens. 


VAN EYCK 


Virgin and Donors (L.). The painting is clear-cut and literal. Inthe man’s 
head, the form is characterized by solidity and color which is of the nature of 
tone and is realized through the manipulation of light; there is a crisp dignity, 
and a feeling of reality which is due to the absence of any accentuation. The 
same is true of the painting of the stuffs. The color is real and convincing 
in all parts of the picture; it is juicy, and there is a suffusion of hot color which 
is quite distinct from the Venetian glow. There is also a general suffusion 
of light, as well as a light-design formed of the bright light on the angel’s 
head and wings. This is not annoying because it is properly motivated (the 
source of the light is shown) and there is ample compensating light elsewhere. 
Perspective is of almost photographic literalness. The detail is beautifully 
done, both in the flowers in the middle distance, and in the background. 


RUBENS 445 


The picture belongs in some respects in the domain of miniature painting, 
but it is given scope by its quality and reality, combining to give the impres- 
sion of peace characteristic of great painting. 


GERARD DAVID 


The Supper at Cana (L.). This isa study in color which is dry but struct- 
urally used. The dryness gives an impression of coolness, and this extends 
to the figures so drawn, which seem lighter and less convincing because of 
it. This relative dryness or poverty must not be confused with light color, 
which, as in Roger van der Weyden, may be warm and real even in the 
total absence of the reddish shades. 


RUBENS 


Kermesse (L.). The first effect, in which the design becomes apparent, is 
one of rhythm and animation. The general feeling for landscape is clearly 
Venetian, but is sufficiently modified to make it Rubens’s own. The Vene- 
tian glow is present, but is attenuated even more than in Paolo Veronese. 
In the grouping of the figures there is no reminiscence of the Venetians, 
and the execution of the movement is also entirely different, being derived, 
probably, from the early Dutch. . 

Un Tournoi (L.). There is a resemblance to Claude. The Venetian 
influence is more in evidence here than it usually is, especially in the union 
of suffused glow and light; there is, however, in this a greater movement 
and rhythm in the drawing of the figures. There is the same movement 
and rhythm inthesky. The line is very fluid and is far from that of Raphael, 
being secured largely by the succession of masses. 

La Fuite de Loth (L.). The classic influence is very apparent, with modi- 
fications both by Raphael and by Rubens himself. All the influences of the 
Renaissance are here in solution. The sky recalls Tintoretto, but it is saved 
from plagiarism by the different use of white, which forms a point of union 
between it and the masses below. In general, this picture is not altogether 
successful: it seems thin and slight. 

Portrait of Suzanne Fourment (L.). The Dutch influence is apparent in 
this picture. The background as usual goes back into the third dimension, with 
the curtain hanging only a short distance back, and the black section seeming 
to recede into infinity. In the lower part of the picture, the eye has more 
to feed on, beCause of the elaborately painted stuffs. This part of the picture 
is done by means quite other than those of the Venetians. 

The Four Philosophers (P.). From the standpoint of composition of por- 
trait groups, as from that of modern art, this is highly successful. It is char- 
acteristically Rubens in color, drawing, and the glow which was modified 
from the Venetian. The spacing, as it appears in the arrangement of the 


446 ANALY S'S VOme ee AlN TING > 


heads relative to one another at different levels in the picture, makes up an 
arresting design, the rhythmic lines giving a concrete example of variety in 
each element, which variety is fused into a perfect unity. The subjects are 
obviously posed, but not offensively so. There is a sort of conflict between 
this portrait-posing and the position of the hand near the centre of the picture, 
which would indicate conversation; but this is irrelevant plastically because 
of the way in which that hand functions as form and movement, attained 
by the use of line and color: it is not the narrative but the plastic considera- 
tion which is important. 

Throughout this picture, color is used structurally up to the limit of 
Rubens’s ability, in texture, faces, hands, furs, etc. Every part of the canvas 
is alive. The two large comparatively unrelieved spots of black in the gowns 
of the figures at right and left, and the space towards the foreground, looked 
at in the abstract, seem to be inactive dark areas, but they really serve as 
counterbalancing masses which set off the figures themselves and the bril- 
liantly and attractively lighted landscape at the back. They are not monot- 
onous or muddy but are relieved by modulation in the intensity of the black 
in various places. This picture shows Rubens’s ability to modify success- 
fully for his own purposes the Venetian tradition. Even in this, however, 
there is, in spite of the vigor, a tendency to stage-play, probably the result 
of the technique of swirl, which diminishes the conviction and the powerful 
grasp of essentials which characterize Tintoretto, Titian, Rembrandt, and 
Cézanne. 

Judgment of Paris (N.G.). There is in this a much greater reminiscence 
than usual of Titian in the structural use of color, the feeling for out-door land- 
scape, and of internal rhythmic design. The manner is characteristically 
Rubens’s, but the swirl is so reduced that it does not appear as something 
overaccentuated or as a technical trick. In the back of the landscape to 
the right, in the sky and the trees, there is some of the Giorgione arcadian 
quality, though the means have not the subtlety of Giorgione’s. In the figures 
there is more of Raphael and less of Michel Angelo than usual, but the line 
is less sharp and more broken than Raphael’s. This simplicity gives a fluid 
grace to the three nudes which compares well with that of Titian or even 
of Giorgione, though the structural use of color is not so good. In the feeling 
of the textures, too, there is a simplification of Rubens’s usual technical 
manner, which gives a delicacy quite its own, and an added charm everywhere 
in the picture. In the figure seated at the tree, there is a grace and charm 
akin to that of Poussin, plus a more convincing three-dimensional character, 
attained by the use of color. The group of which this figure is one is beauti- 
fully composed in the Raphael manner, but is more original, more solid, 
infinitely richer in color-values. Throughout the picture there is a succes- 
sion of rhythms, in whatever area may be selected, and these rhythms merge, 
expand, intertwine into a general rhythmic quality which dominates the 
picture. 


The general tendency towards delicacy is characteristic also of the color, 


VELASQUEZ 447 


which, though unquestionably that of Rubens, is free from the suggestion of 
stridency which it so often has elsewhere in his work. The color functions 
not only locally but as a sort of Venetian glow, pervading the whole canvas; 
these overtones take the place of brighter, stronger, more frequently repeated 
color-spots in unifying the canvas. This Giorgionesque quality increases 
upon further inspection and analysis, and the feeling of placidity and charm 
which it gives is perhaps more nearly equal to Giorgione’s own than anything 
even in Titian, though Rubens’s characteristic vigor prevents it from ever 
reaching the subtlety, delicacy, and the majesty with which Giorgione real- 
ized the natural setting for lyric subject-matter. It is also inferior in that 
it does not appear to equal advantage at all distances: when the picture is 
viewed from half way across the room, the lyric quality of the landscape, 
though pronounced, is weaker, and there is also diminution of the solidity 
of the nudes—they are lighter, less solid, less real, than the figures of either 
Titian or Giorgione. Giorgione’s lyric charm does not diminish at any dis- 
tance within the ordinary range of vision. 

In the use of light in this picture there is the same general tendency towards 
the pattern, achieved by the duplication of units of light, shade, and color, 
which constitutes the dominant note in Bellini’s ‘‘Sacred Conversation.” 
Here the pattern is not so obvious as in the Bellini, is more irregular, and 
because of the brighter tints is more colorful. The use of the light, in con- 
nection with shadow, in the modelling of the nudes, is extraordinarily subtle. 
The whole effect of pattern made up of color, light, and shadow, scattered 
in various-sized units throughout the picture, is held together by the color- 
overtones already described, and results in a rare degree of unification. 

Peaceand War(N.G.). The powerful, Titian-like figures and the Tintoretto- 
like sky, make this picture worthy of a place among the best of the Renais- 
sance masterpieces. It shows Rubens’s derivation from the above-mentioned 
painters, and it shows also his derivation from the Flemish in the still-life of 
fruits, etc., and in the leopard, with a realistic rendering everywhere of form, 
texture, etc. This is the most striking instance of the Flemish influence upon 
Rubens, but the Flemish qualities are so merged with the solidity of the 
Venetians and of Rubens himself that the effect is clearly his own. 

Autumn, Chateau de Steen (N.G.). In this there is a richness, a deep juicy 
color, which by its quality and manner of use in comparatively small areas 
makes it possible to say with safety that Constable’s best efforts were inspired 
by Rubens. 


VELASQUEZ 


Infanta Marguerita (L.). The design is made up of the figure and objects 
on a black background, which goes off into infinity: the child’s hand rests 
on the chair and ties the figure to it compositionally. This effect of infinity 
gives space-composition in its highest form: it is due to the fact that the 
background is of solid, not mottled or otherwise differentiated color. These 
factors, masses, color, and space, form the main design. 


448 AN ALY SS iD Te ACN LNs 


The head is a fine and delicate but convincing three-dimensional form, 
though it is not the rounded form of either Giotto or Titian. The form is 
attained by a fusion of light, shadow, and color, with no element accentuated. 
An interesting design secondary in importance only to the first is that made 
up of the stripes in the dress, chiefly black, and broken by the ornaments in 
the ruching, but with white lines meeting the black at various angles, together 
with the pink bows on the chest and wrist, and the pink flowers in the hand. 
Subsidiary to this second design are an infinite series of designs in various 
parts of the dress, no two of them alike, all harmonized with each other, 
and all united in the larger design. 

The colors are rich, alive, sparkling; they are harmoniously blended, and 
form a design. The whites are like old, darkened ivory with a rich patine, 
the blacks like ebony with a patine, the pinks like roses dulled into richness. 
The red in the chair has the look, the feel, the dull patine of old rich velvet, 
and gives to the chair solid, convincing, unabridged reality. The meaning 
and use of color were clearly learned by Velasquez from the Venetians, but 
while in the Venetians we feel color as the essential part of the structure, 
here all trace of obviousness is gone, and we feel it an essential but unob- 
trusive element. It is not laid-on, but its integral or structural character 
is so perfectly in solution that the fact of its function does not spring out at us. 

The solidity of the objects depicted show that tactile values are capable 
of realization in painting in which the accentuation of modelling and per- 
spective is so slight that it almost seems flat, though it is not really such. 
Perspective is used only slightly, but to the extent that it is needed: the 
meagre indications of it are an instance of the art that conceals art. Similarly 
with the modelling: there is an absence of any obvious use of light and shadow, 
but the solidity is there, as something felt rather than perceived, as we feel 
the solidity of the real material things about us but do not distinguish the 
qualities which make them appear solid. This supreme art in concealment 
of the means is accomplished by using only the barest essentials, stripped of 
everything superficial: it is simplification carried down to rock-bottom 
essentials of ‘‘form,’”’ of what makes a thing what it is, distinct from every 
other thing. This grasp of the essence of the individual thing Velasquez 
had above every other painter. With the aid of a mastery of paint also 
unequalled by any other painter, he grasped the fundamental, ignored the 
obvious, simplified everything to its basic forms, and combined these in order 
and measure, with intelligence, knowledge, and a deep insight into the meaning 
of things. 

This picture has a universal appeal—balance, dignity, peace, charm, 
mystery, all expressed in orderly, convincing plastic terms, without virtu- 
osity or sentiment. His detached realism moves us as emotion expressed 
never does. He makes us see and feel with our mind, and the emotional 
stir is just what the situation in the real world would arouse, could we but 
see it with his deeper vision and greater intellect. 

WomanwiththeFan (W.). This painting is convincing, but with a tendency 


VELASQUEZ 449 


to surface prettiness which makes it inferior to the ‘‘Infanta Marguerita.”’ 
The head is more realistically painted: that is, there is more of the feeling 
of actual flesh, as in other painters, than in Velasquez at his best. The 
painting of the gloved hands, with the paint broad and rather thick, and 
with little regard to fineness of detail, makes an interesting note in the com- 
position; however, the sense that the gloves do not fit the hands gives an 
effect of crudeness. The gloves are painted with a beautiful light blue in 
which light predominates, and gives them a rich, solid, sober feeling plas- 
tically. Viewed from near by, the shawl which envelopes the head seems 
drier than Velasquez’s painting at its best, and compared with the gloves 
and bow of ribbon it appears lacking in richness; when seen from a distance, 
however, it has the richness needed to carry the effect. The dress is richly 
painted, but less so than the gloves and ribbon. The relation between the 
figure and background is good, but the background, which is of a dark gray, 
gives the effect of a wall rather than of infinity as in the ‘‘Infanta Marguerita.”’ 
The whole painting is simple and dignified, and shows Velasquez’s feeling 
for essential qualities, but it falls short of the extreme simplification which is 
characteristic of him at his best. It shows the origin of Goya in composition 
and treatment, but is more real, more solid, and stronger. 

Don Baltasar Carlos in the Riding School (W.). The simplification char- 
acteristic of Velasquez at his best is superbly illustrated in the painting of the 
horse, and especially of the figure in all its details, hat, face, clothes, etc. That 
figure reveals the origin of Goya and Manet. Impressionism is forecasted also 
in the treatment of the various figures in the background, which are not only 
blurred in detail, but broadly treated with absence of details. Perspective 
is adequate but not especially emphasized. The black horse, placed on the 
subtly rich gray background which is interspersed with figures in various 
colors, including a slight note of red, makes a striking contrast. There is a 
sort of aerial atmosphere in the whole picture, reminiscent of both Masaccio 
and the Venetians, but not especially emphasized. Instead of a real Vene- 
tian glow, we have a general richness, and this pervades the picture and 
gives a note of quiet dignity, subtlety, peacefulness. 

Don Baltasar Carlos in Infancy (W.). The immediately striking effect in 
this picture is that of the spacing and composition. This is realized as few men 
could have done it, considering that the background is of a deep brown color. 
The tassel seems to hang in mid-air, the feather floats away from the chair, 
and this effect of distance is achieved only by means of a dark shadow. The 
figure stands in the room, completely surrounded by an atmosphere which 
has the quality of infinity realized only by the greatest painters. The canvas 
is divided into two parts: on the left is the hat and the curtain that reaches 
to the ground; on the right, the curtain is raised and tied with the tassel, and 
in the area thus disclosed is the indication of space reaching away to infinity. 
The contrast between this space and the opposing curtain, the folds of which 
are clearly discernible, makes up a superb composition, which in spite of 
the variety of elements is simple and perfectly unified. 


32 


450 ANALY SHS 3-0 Ba AUN ETN Gs 


The feeling of everything is soft and velvety. There is the same simpli- 
fication as in the ‘‘Infanta Marguerita,’’ but the function of the textures is 
different from their function in that picture, in which they operated as units 
in the composition and design. Here the stuffs are rather blurred, with 
details omitted, and the value is rather tactile, to give the feeling of soft 
velvetiness. The color and general effect of the gown is duplicated to the 
left by the plume and the lighted corner of the seat. The subject-matter 
and the means by which it is rendered are alike characterized by simplicity, 
charm, dignity, and reality. In Hals’s ‘‘Laughing Cavalier” (see analysis) 
the textural effects are literal, detailed, and striking; in this picture, with 
simplification so complete that we are at a loss to detect the means at all, 
the essential quality of the material is even more faithfully rendered, and 
with much better aesthetic effect. 

The influence of the Venetians is apparent in various places, including the 
red scarf around the baby’s body, the bottom of the foot-stool, and the plume. 
It consists in the organic use of color simplified in Velasquez’s unique manner. 


REMBRANDT 


The Unmerciful Servant (W.). The first effect is that of a superb design 
(disposition of masses, color, spaces, etc.), very simple, and made up of the 
figure on the left, perfectly balanced by the three figures on the right, which 
function as a single compositional element or unit in relation to the figure on 
the left, rather than as three separate figures. Those three figures show Rem- 
brandt’s supreme mastery of space-composition, of fluid rhythmic grace, of 
line, and of a marvellous color-sense. None of the colorsis brilliant. They pro- 
ceed from darkness to varying degrees of light and back again to darkness ina 
pleasing, graceful flow, reinforced by lines, spots of light, and masses, all tend- 
ing to form a harmonious design which gives to that group of three figures a 
unique power even for Rembrandt. The three heads seem to rise from one 
body, regarded as a mass, yet there is no question but that the three heads 
belong to three different people. There is a lightness, a delicacy, a charm, a 
dignity, a placid intentness to all these figures which is arresting at first and 
sustains that effect after analysis of the plastic means by which it is accom- 
plished. The figure on the left is all lightness, delicacy, floating dignified peace. 
The hand floats in the air. The way the color in it functions in relation to the 
lighter colors on the opposite side is marvellous: both compositionally and 
with regard to subject-matter it makes that figure dominate the group as 
a whole. 

Rembrandt’s mastery in the use of light and shade to attain three-dimen- 
sional solidity is here exemplified in the highest degree in every part of the 
canvas, as is also his unique power to differentiate objects from one another 
when they are close together in color-values. This chiaroscuro does not seem 
a technical device, but the only possible means for achieving the particular 


REMBRANDT 45t 


effect aimed at. The simplicity of this picture is amazing, overpowering. 
The colors are rich and glowing, and the composite effect is one of compelling 
reality; it is loaded with the emotion which Rembrandt gives more than any 
other painter. It is a perfect example of the integration of plastic values 
with those of subject-matter. 

Hendrickje Stoffels (L.). The effect of this picture is immediately and per- 
manently arresting. It consists of a rich golden design made of face and 
chest which slopes gently towards each shoulder and so, with no visible 
contours, into the black background. The background is not felt as color 
but as infinite space: it seems as though there were nothing physical there 
at all. The sloping continues, with the golden quality gradually merged into 
a brown tempered with gold, down to the end of the hand, where the rich 
gold again emerges, though less in degree than in the face and chest. This 
simple and arresting design, when examined, displays a new design in every 
area. The source of these designs is at first elusive: lines are few and 
extremely unpronounced; color is there only in the form of tone. The trick 
is turned by an extraordinary power for using light and shadow, in every 
conceivable degree of variation to attain an infinite variety of patterns or 
designs. The method is far removed from that of Velasquez, of clean-cut 
unemotional detachment. Every area in this painting is a source of wonder 
and mystery; we feel the wonder and mystery—we only see the objective 
fact that calls them up in a way that we cannot explain. Here too is sim- 
plicity, but it is not, as in Velasquez, especially directed to the physical 
representation of objects: it is a simplicity plus a rendering of that simplicity 
by technical means extremely simple in themselves and loaded with the 
emotion-provoking power of the object portrayed rather than with Velasquez’s 
depiction of physical essences. 

The physical values are rendered with great command of paint, and 
Rembrandt is as great a realist as Velasquez in making us see and feel the 
physical basis of things; but no flesh ever looked like that. And yet no flesh 
ever showed more clearly its origin in the supernatural in which we all believe 
in our mystical moments. In all this, in the unreal-real hair, face, nose, 
eyes, mouth, is that pervasive, indefinable addition which ties our mystic, 
religious nature to this world by a definite, specific, visible objective fact 
which is in front of our eyes, in the painting. The expression of the mouth 
is not sentiment, it is the feeling of the person herself and the same feeling 
that we have in looking at it. It is mysterious, noble, sublime, all merged 
into a religious experience, without reference to or use of adventitious aids 
like story-telling or the use of religious episodes. Rembrandt paints in terms 
of the broadest universal human values. 

Woman Bathing (N.G.). In this picture there is a double use of light not 
usually pointed out in Rembrandt. The light is in part used as an inde- 
pendent element in design in the treatment of the shirt and the chest; in the 
face, the legs, and the rest of the figure it is used as chiaroscuro. 


452 AN AOL YS oO FEAT TL NGS 


The Supper at Emmaus (L.). In this there is complete functional activity 
of every part of the picture, with plastic and human values of the very highest 
quality. Throughout, the tone functions as color. The integration of 
subject-matter of a high intrinsic value with plastic form could hardly be 
improved upon. The key-note of the picture, as of Rembrandt’s work 
generally, is dignity. 


METSU 


Still-Life (Z.). This still-life shows the start of the movement that pro- 
duced Chardin. It has great delicacy and at the same time power and reality. 


TERBORG 


Concert (L.). In the field of genre Terborg’s powers are of high order. 
This picture contains anticipations of Watteau and Fragonard. The painting 
of stuffs is very well done: the table-cloth contains just enough elaboration 
of detail and brightness of color to enable it, as a mass, to function harmoni- 
ously with the rest of the picture, the figures, background, etc. The result 
is a high degree of unity. 


VERKOLIE 


Interior (L.). In this there is a more detailed painting of stuffs than in the 
previous picture, but elsewhere there is a comparative thinness and lack of 
quality, and the result is a loss of balance and an impression of mere virtuosity. 


PETER DE HOOCH 


Dutch Interior (Z.). In this all the elements of the Dutch School are in 
fusion. Peter de Hooch is a master of pattern, in which there is a foretaste of 
cubism. The use of straight lines meeting at angles and not in curves is very 
effective. 


VERMEER 


The Lacemaker (L.). This picture is essentially genre, but is characterized 
by very great ability to use paint. The balance of means is perfect, and 
the use of light, though very effective, avoids either overaccentuation or 
virtuosity. 


BROUWER 


Le Pansement (L.). The Rembrandtesque chiaroscuro is here adapted to 
genre-painting, with terse, simplified drawing which is very powerful. There 


BOUCHER 453 


is, however, the tendency characteristic of the school to lavish a high degree 
of skill upon situations which in themselves approach melodrama. 


WATTEAU 


La Gamme d’Amour (N.G.). The influence of Rubens and the Venetians is 
strongly present, attenuated to the Eighteenth Century delicacy. The robes 
are well realized in organic color. The glow at the back is more reminiscent 
of the Venetians than of Rubens. The whole picture is a graceful, rhythmic 
movement of color, line, mass. 

Jupiter and Antiope (L.). This illustrates the degree in which Watteau’s 
preoccupation with technique makes him inferior to Fragonard in point of 
solidity and reality. 

Embarkation for Cythera (L.). The first thing that strikes the observer 
about this picture is the Venetian feeling in the treatment of the landscape, 
with the influence of Claude in the direction of dignity, grandeur, and mystery. 
Coypel’s romantic tendency is heightened by the use of the Rubens swirl. 
There is less solidity than in Rubens: the picture is softer, less robust, more 
feminine, both in general effect and in the drawing of the figures. There is, 
however, harmony in the treatment of the figures. Hence the Watteau 
form, idyllic, romantic, feminine. A part of this form is also the diffuseness 
of his outlines, in which there is an anticipation of the impressionists, and 
which distinguishes him from Boucher, who is always sharp, cameo-like. 


VAN LOO 


A Halt Out Hunting (Z.). Here the tradition of Lancret is used with less 
than Lancret’s ability. The colors are those of a chromo. 


LE MOYNE 


Juno, Iris and Flora (L.). In this picture, the Rubens tradition falls away 
much further than in Boucher. The command of means is here inadequate 
to render the essence of the things depicted. The drawing is inexpressive, 
the color slight and unconvincing. What particularly tells against him is 
that he emulates men with whom he is quite unable to bear comparison, not 
so much because of a lack of technical skill as because he has not the intelli- 
gence which would compensate for the lack of the essence of the tradition. 
The effect of this is artificiality. He can do no more than suggest the joie 
de vivre which is a part of the Rubens tradition. 


BOUCHER 


Renaud and Armide (L.). The Rubens tradition is here, but there is a 
weakening of the characteristic Rubens traits: the painting has a superficial 


454 ANALY Sie SiO UNS Dalen, Gx 


character and looks as if it were laid on china. The Rubens tendency to 
prettiness, which in Rubens himself at his best is in abeyance, is here fully 
materialized. The sweetness and slightness are emphasized by the essentially 
trivial subjects, and these, being unreal, are uninteresting. 

Pastoral (L.). In this picture there is idyllic character, making for a sur- 
face charm, which however remains superficial. The line is expressive, and 
the figures all seem to be doing something, but the means by which action is 
represented are specious, and the action is slight. The execution may be 
called crisp. 


COY PEL 


Esther before Ahasuerus (L.). In this there is an attenuation of the Dutch 
and Flemish treatment of stuffs, with something of the Venetian glow. There 
is overdramatization, with extreme artificiality and unreality. A monu- 
mental subject is attempted, but both in the subject and in the use of the 
means there is exaggeration to the point of grotesqueness. 


LANCRET 


Autumn (Z.). Lancret adds to the influences visible in Watteau and 
Boucher that of the Dutch genre-painters. These two influences, plus the 
tendency to elongate his figures, make up a strong and personal form. 


GREUZE 


Village Betrothal (L.). In this picture, the classic Poussin tradition has 
gone far on the road to degeneration. The color is very bad and the skillful 
drawing can give no more than an impression of drama. Except in the draw- 
ing of the figures, and in the composition, which though stereotyped is good, 
there is a complete lack of quality, and this unevenness destroys the unity 
of the picture. The expressive drawing is not integrated with any other 
plastic qualities. 


FRAGONARD 


The Vow to Cupid (Z.). This picture is not to be considered realistically, 
the stiffness of the form being obviously determined by compositional consid- 
erations. The general effect, compared with Rubens, is that of dryness, and 
there is less depth, intensity, and juiciness of color than in Rubens. There 
is also a general tendency towards delicacy. 

The composition is extremely good, with entirely unacademic disposition 
of objects. There is no bilateral symmetry: every part of the canvas on which 
the eye falls is varied, and there is not a square inch of the picture that is not 
alive and moving. Far removed as it is from literal realism, the picture is 


Has 455 


highly animated. The Rubens tradition has been attenuated to give the 
typical Fragonard form. 

Bathers (Z.). The form of this is obviously influenced by Rubens. All 
Fragonard’s characteristics are illustrated here, the swirl, the fine sense of 
design, the color, the line, the sprightliness of effect, the skillful modelling, the 
solidity combined with lightness. 


RIGAUD 


Phillipe V. (Z.). The Rubens tradition is here, diluted by Van Dyck. It 
has sunk to the quintessence of meretricious beauty, with an effect of 
foppishness. 


CHARDIN 


Ustensiles Variés (L.). The composition is unconventional: there is no 
orderly, symmetrical distribution of masses, but a geometrical pattern with 
straight rectangular lines. There is a wonderful division of space, with each 
space made interesting by the varying dimensions, shapes, etc. The space- 
composition is well done in spite of the concentration of objects: every object 
has its own space, and there is no impression of jumbling. There is a feel- 
ing of clarity through the whole picture, with successful atmospheric effect, 
made bright by colors varying from the white of the pitcher to the gray of the 
background. The color functions at first sight, chiefly in the blue of the 
top of the box, the brown of the table, the deep red of the box itself, and the 
pattern on the top. The quality of the color is choice and varied, though 
not essentially bright. The picture is a masterpiece of the first rank because 
of the successful combination of many objects, the variety, the masterly 
handling of stuffs, with modelling and perspective to give the effect of reality, 
and the unity throughout. The picture has charm and dignity, and as 
always in Chardin, harmony. 


HALS 


La Bohémienne (L.). The lights and shadows in the face are unified into a 
design, which is part of a larger design, in itself double. First, there is the 
effect of the picture as a whole; then the contrast of the brightly colored tex- 
tures against the dark background of the gown. The placing of the figure 
against the background is very well done, as is the adaptation of the color 
and tone of the dark gown to the slightly darker background of the picture as 
a whole. The handling of paint is admirable, as is the technical proficiency in 
general: the painting of stuffs, especially, is extraordinarily skilled and literal. 
On the other hand, the background is uninteresting, so that there is resort to 
the employment of specious devices in order to relieve the monotony. In 
the face there is sufficient characteristic individual expression to convey a 
universal value in easily recognizable form. The picture, however, lacks the 


456 AON A TY ES SAT oan oN Nees 


warmth and the deeper human values characteristic of the masters. Com- 
pared with great painters such as Titian, Tintoretto, Rubens, Rembrandt, 
Hals seems flashy, dry, and brittle. 

Laughing Cavalier (W.). The use of the characteristic Hals technique of 
brush-work in the face here yields a form less obvious in means of execution, 
and so more convincing, than is usual with Hals. It is perhaps also the best 
realization of the almost photographic rendering of stuffs, varied in color, pat- 
tern, and intricate design. There is more reality in these stuffs than in those 
of the other Dutchmen, for example, De Keyser, in whom they seem to be the 
main theme of the painting. Here they merely strike us as beautiful, rich, 
of varied colors, designs, and patterns, which go well with the broader treat- 
ment of the face, in which the brush-strokes are visible but are not too much 
accentuated. This combination of rather broad painting in the face and 
miniature-like painting in the clothes is successfully unified and offers a 
striking contrast. This is a wonderful achievement in painting, shows Hals’s 
mastery of stuff-painting as better than that of any of the other Dutch paint- 
ers, and proves that he was a supreme master of the use of paint and a great 
artist in achieving a form by the means just noted. Nevertheless, in this as 
in all his painting, there is a certain obvious virtuosity. Neither as a painter 
nor as an artist is he in the same class with Velasquez. 


GOYA 


Portrait of Dr. Galos (B. F.) (No.5*). Goya’s characteristics are represented 
in the portrait of Dr. Galos, which, as Goya wrote on the picture, was painted 
‘fin his eightieth year, in 1826.’ This painting, or one like it, served as the 
model for the academic imitations of the Stuarts, Peales and other virtuosos. 

The figure is placed near the centre of the canvas, and the composition 
is made up of a series of masses and colors that achieve a simple but high- 
grade design. The only mass beside the figure is an object in contrasting 
color, which may be either a table or part of a bench. The background is 
gray, mottled with light to relieve it of monotony. The face has a fine three- 
dimensional solidity attained by the use of modelling, done chiefly with light, 
line and color, but relieved from the one-piece mass-effect by variations in 
the use of these plastic means; these variations form a design. That design 
is noticeable both at a distance and upon close inspection, but the effect at a 
distance is of a convincing solid reality. The color of the face is expressive 
of rugged health, the neck is covered with a stock of white, diaphanous, 
delicate material, the coat is a deep bluish-black relieved by gold buttons. 
This figure in relation to the mottled gray background, and the red table in 
the back, makes a plastic form which was taken from Velasquez but is rend- 
ered in Goya’s own highly expressive drawing, rather than in Velasquez’s 
impersonal detached manner. The relation of the body to the background 
and the table in the back is to be found almost in exact duplicate in Velasquez’s 


* In the analyses of pictures belonging to the Barnes Foundation, the catalogue- 
number in the Foundation’s collection is given. 


INGRES 457 
painting of ‘‘Don Baltasar Carlos in Infancy,’’ especially as regards space- 
composition: the space is rendered subtly and with a degree of delicacy and 
appropriateness required by the situation. Here, as always with Goya, the 
light is used in such a way that it forms a design in itself and contributes 
to the total aesthetic effect of the picture. In this portrait the light is con- 
centrated on the face, the stock, and the buttons, and is toned down in the 
background, so that the whole painting has good general illumination, the 
light forming an appealing design. Goya’s especial interest in the depiction 
of psychological traits is well represented here. Without specious use of the 
line in psychological characterization, line, color and light are here used to 
portray a strong, solid, substantial personality, both in the expression of the 
face and in the drawing of the body. In the portrait of the ‘‘ Royal Family 
of Charles IV,’’ by the same legitimate use of plastic means, Goya represents 
human meanness, ugliness and stupidity in people dressed up in the highly 
ornate finery of that royal group. What saves these pictures from being 
mere illustrations is the fact that the expression is rendered by legitimate 
means and is not an end in itself. It makes a unity which enters into har- 
monious relations with the other plastic factors, and thus produces a plastic 
form that has an appeal of its own aside from any illustrative element. 


INGRES 


Portrait of Madame Riviére (L.). This is cold and formal, but interesting 
because of the linear effects. The woman’s dress is a rhythmic design of lines; 
there is also rhythm between the dress and the shawl, a tapestry-effect, which 
extends around her left arm, and is saved from monotony by the variety 
of its rhythms. The superimposed design in the shawl is almost photo- 
graphic, but it is not banal because of the flowing lines in the folds, juxtaposed 
with a very rich blue. 

The coldness of Ingres is well illustrated by the painting of flesh in this 
picture as compared with that in the adjacent ‘‘ Death of Sardanapalus,”’ by 
Delacroix. The two men, with practically the same means at their command, 
that is, line, white paint, and shadows, secure totally different effects. Dela- 
croix’s looks like a picture of rich human flesh, with the color part of the 
substance, while Ingres’s looks like an arabesque on an alabaster wall. The 
painting is to be considered chiefly as a unity of linear designs. 

La Source (L.). There is a total lack of feeling: the background looks like 
painted scenery and has none of the quality of rocks; the color is drab and 
superficial. 

Edipus and the Sphinx (Z.). The feeling in the nude is that of Leonardo, 
with the same use of light and shade in modelling. The drawing is more 
clear-cut, like Raphael’s. 


DELACROIX 


Les Femmes d’Alger (L.). There is a beautiful design, but upon analysis 
there is a loss of interest because of reminiscences of familiar genre-pictures. 


4558 ANALYSES HOR @PADNISIUNGS 


The distribution of masses gives an effective balance, although there is an excess 
of masses upon one side of the canvas. There is no tendency towards literal 
reproduction of textures or stuffs, as in Ingres; the tendency is towards impres- 
sionism. There is a fine variety of different kinds of planes and of vertical, 
horizontal, and curvilinear lines. The lighting is good, and a pleasing design 
is made up of the different degrees of lighting in the different figures. There 
are no monotonous parts of the canvas. The floor is made up of lights and 
shadows upon the feet, rugs, and parquetry. The left wall is made interesting 
by the use of light, which relieves it from monotony, by the picture on the 
upper part, by the red and black door, and by the object over the door. In 
other words, in every part of the picture, there is a variety of objects all of 
which are interesting. 

As regards color, the first effect is one of richness. We get a decided 
glow, an atmosphere, a swimming color. This color is finely proportioned 
and functions in all parts of the canvas, so that harmony of color results 
in each object, with a total effect of harmony in the picture as a whole; the 
color also unifies the composition in this picture as it does not in the ‘‘ Death 
of Sardanapalus.’’ The color is rather broken instead of being laid on in 
large masses; this is probably due to the influence of Constable, and marks 
the coming of impressionism. In the painting of the cushion the impres- 
sionistic manner is almost fully developed. In the kneeling figure to the 
right of the centre, in the woman’s blouse, the general manner of treatment 
is conventional, but elsewhere the tendency is towards the accentuation of 
lighted spots, in the manner afterwards adopted by Claude Monet. 

This picture is of interest for plastic reasons, but for no others. In this, 
we are at the opposite extreme from the Castelfranco Giorgione, in which 
there is no technical innovation, but instead a use of conventional means 
so personal and effective that there is nothing second-hand or shop-worn about 
the picture. In this there is essential conventionality in spite of the masterly 
handling of plastic novelties and the superb composing by means of color. 
In Manet’s ‘‘Olympia’’ there is the same tendency towards a pose, but Manet 
poses his figures only superficially: they function so much in the design that 
the plastic quality overbalances the posed quality. 

Naufrage de Don Juan (L.). There is a finely-proportioned color active in 
all parts of the canvas. In the men in the boat, color is used to reinforce 
movement. 


COURBET 


La Source (Z.). This picture suggests Diaz and also Tintoretto’s ‘‘Suzanne 
at the Bath.’’ But the poetic and the dramatic traditions of these two men 
have been so merged, and the relevant elements in them so fused, without 
overemphasis or virtuosity, that the effect is one of profound reality. 

The Painter’s Studio (L.). In this picture Courbet took Corot’s figures and 
put blood and iron in them. There are also in solution here Leonardo, Bron- 


MANET 459 


zino, Tintoretto, Velasquez, and others. There is a fine spaciousness, economy 
of means, successful modulation of the wall of the room by means of color 
and light, with a reminiscence of Piero della Francesca in the blue and silver 
tones. The picture unifies because from one end of the canvas to the other 
we have a sweeping line, rhythmic in quality, leading to the nude and there 
breaking up into a set of radiating lines. It passes through the painter 
himself at the easel, takes a sudden drop to the little boy’s head, and follows 
an almost straight line to the woman asleep, whence it jumps to the man’s 
high hat and continues by a series of short breaks to the other side of the 
canvas. On the left it is complicated by a set of arabesques in line which solicit 
the attention and carry it into the figures, somewhat in the manner of “‘Le 
Bain Turc.’’ The picture is preferable to the Ingres because in the latter the 
form is almost purely linear, whereas Courbet avails himself of every one 
of the plastic means. 

On a much larger scale Courbet has done what Titian did in the ‘‘ Entomb- 
ment,’’ and Poussin in ‘‘Les Aveugles de Jérico.” In the left part of the 
painting there is in solution the Venetian influence in the background, which 
arrests us for a moment but carries the eye down to the group of figures 
at the left, with the glow itself interestingly varied in different parts of the 
canvas. There is a variation in the nuances from almost nothing to a deep 
and rich glow among the trees. 


MANET 


Olympia (L.). The first effect is of novelty—the picture does not look like 
other paintings. The reasons for this are not immediately obvious. There is 
nothing revolutionary in the general design, which consists of a central figure 
used as a unifying element in a picture clearly divided in two parts, with 
sufficient masses on either side to obtain symmetrical balance though without 
exact duplication of masses. The novelty is obviously in the means—one or 
more plastic means not used in the manner customary before the picture was 
painted. The central figure is what chiefly solicits our attention, and it is 
there that we first find new points. 

This is a strange, rigid, angular figure, flat-looking but not really flat. 
It is bent in a rigid angle in the middle, with a pert-looking posed head, and 
no modelling by the usual aid of light, shade, and color. Yet, in spite of 
its apparent unnaturalness, this figure has a stark reality; it gives the effect 
of what is portrayed without literal representation; it has a Velasquez-like 
reality, plus something more. This is accomplished by means of the sim- 
plification which came from Velasquez, with retention of sufficient detail of 
representation to render it intelligible. Upon that simplification a new form, 
which is distinctively that of Manet, is built. Dark shadows are abolished 
and the color of objects is substituted. The picture is flatter than any of 
Velasquez’s, yet it is of three-dimensional value; it is not modelled as a figure 
by Courbet would be, yet it is obviously solid. We find only the fewest 


460 ANALY SE S?.© 1 RAEN IRIN <ais 


possible lines—in shoulders, breast, legs—which are never long, not sharply 
defined, but broken in contour. The figure lives as a plastic unit. 

The design, though it seems not very novel at first, is really quite unusual 
in many ways. The negro’s head, serving as a balancing mass to the nude’s 
head and chest and as the central figure in the right half of the painting, is 
black, and is made blacker by the pink gown. From the knees the figure 
of the nude is continued into the negro’s upper trunk, and as a whole it forms 
a linear and mass unit made more picturesque by the bouquet. The negro’s 
head, together with the pink gown against a green background of curtains, is 
an extraordinary rendering of color-values and space-values, and this design 
is enriched by the vague folds in the curtains and dress. Each point of the 
canvas is alive with compositional effects—the black cat standing on the 
white bed and against the green background is another triumph of color and 
space values. The sharp division by line in centre gives two distinct pictures, 
one on each side—to left the nude’s head and trunk against a brown, vaguely 
flowered background, to right, the separate design of the negro as already 
described. These two pictures are unified by the body of the nude extending 
from the upper middle of the left picture to the lower middle of the right 
picture, in its stark, picturesque, angular reality. The nude is paralleled and 
supported by the bed with its great central mass of pillows and ivory-colored 
drapery with embroidered, flowery pattern. This contrasts with the nude 
in colors but is harmonized with it in linear rhythms, masses, degree of 
solidity in pillow, mattresses, etc. This whole support is reinforced com- 
positionally by the angle of red stuff showing at the bottom of the canvas 
and on a line with the nude’s arm and head and chest, and by the green 
drapery in folds at the upper left of the canvas. 

All this is straight, honest, skilled use of plastic means to attain a plastic 
quality which is a thing in itself, independent of any narrative interest, 
which may be either relevant or irrelevant. It is a powerful painting from 
any standpoint, and the power does not diminish with observation. There 
are many good traditions here, but in solution. There is Velasquez’s sim- 
plicity, Courbet’s stark realism; there is feeling for character, for quality 
of painting, there is terse expressive drawing, broad painting, diffusion of 
light in the manner contributed by impressionism, and used so broadly and 
embracingly that it is the light, in this distinctive use, that gives the paint- 
ing its characteristic power. It is fluid grace achieved by angularity and 
stiffness merged in a new and distinctive plastic form. 


CLAUDE LORRAIN 


Village Féte (L.). Claude’s characteristics are all to be observed here, the 
romantic glamor and drama of nature, the classic and Venetian influences, the 
French quality, and the faultiness of the figures when they are looked at in 
detail. His preoccupation with and mastery of landscape are shown by the 


CLAW DE LO RRA TN 461 


compositional use of the tree in the centre, which willy-nilly compels the spec- 
tator to join with the artist in giving attention primarily to the natural scene. 

Seapiece (L.). Thisis the extreme of romantic lyricism. Only the painter’s 
art saves it from being a postal card loaded with sentimental sweetness. 
It is sweet in itself, but the admirable use of plastic means avoids offensive- 
ness. It marks a step further in the direction of the romanticism of the 
Nineteenth Century. Even the sky has been made dramatic and romantic 
by strong means, reminiscent of Tintoretto. 

Seaport at Sunset (L.). In this Claude almost approaches Carpaccio: there 
are numerous architectural elements, but the feeling for landscape still holds 
the primacy over that for human figures. In other words, the figures func- 
tion as elements of variety in the composition, which remains of the nature 
of landscape; thus the resemblance to Carpaccio is superficial. Here as 
elsewhere there is some similarity to the seventeenth century Dutch. 


POTTER 


La Prairie (Z.). This is an extremely good, though not a great picture. 
There is a vivid sense of air, of enveloping atmosphere. This is given by a com- 
bination of the Venetian glow with the Rembrandtesque glow, and, together 
with the highly effective space-composition, it makes the picture. The whole 
design is one of great simplicity, and the linear rhythm is chiefly constituted 
by the design in the cows and the clouds, with a balance between the two 
factors. 


CONSTABLE 


The Hay Wain (N.G.). The first general effect is reminiscent of Hobbema 
in the dramatic character of the sky, though it is less stylistically dramatic, 
and in the solid, real character of the houses and trees. The reality is less in 
the execution of detail than in the general feeling for what is presented, and 
the trees are less obviously dramatically posed to unify with the dramatic 
sky. This is the effect primarily of the picture when seen from a distance, 
but the resemblance to Hobbema is clear. 

The composition is admirably though very unconventionally unified. 
The centre of the canvas is taken up by the team in the water; the large 
mass made up of the house and tree at the left is balanced by the open land- 
scape and house at the right of the canvas; color also functions powerfully in 
tying this design together. The use of juxtaposed small spots of color is very 
much in evidence and shows the impressionists’ debt to Constable. The 
tree is a static, placid compositional unit, with the sky a moving mass above. 
In the treatment of the team, the house, the trees, and the sky there are so 
many reminiscences of Rubens’s ‘‘Landscape with Shepherd,” that it is 
probable that Constable had studied that picture; however, all these remini- 
scences are so adapted to Constable’s own form that there is no suggestion of 
plagiarism. 


462 ANAINY S 2S) O- Py PiAsh Neh DNS 


This picture exemplifies in the highest degree all Constable’s personal char- 
acteristics as noted above. His use of color in designs growing continually 
smaller, but retaining their quality no matter how small they become, his 
feeling for the spirit of place, his adjustment of detailed representation to the 
compositional importance of the object depicted, his effective designs of light, 
and his rich, glowing surface-charm, are all present to the fullest extent. 

Flatford Mill (V.G.). In this picture the rendering of landscape is less orig- 
’ inal than in the ‘‘ Hay Wain,” and the color is not so rich and juicy. Still, there 
is a general use of the method of color-division. There is more tendency 
to make a dramatic union between the large tree and the sky (in the drawing 
and movement) than in ‘‘'The Hay Wain:’’ the tree on the right side tends 
to repeat the voluminal movement of the clouds on the left. Much of the 
painting in the foreground is rather brittle and dry, though it is not com- 
pletely destitute of color. This picture well illustrates the already-mentioned 
merging of a relatively unimportant small figure, like that of the man in the 
wagon, into the general massive effect of the landscape by omission of detail 
and impressionistic rendering. 

Salisbury Cathedral (NV.G.). This picture shows so much manipulation of 
light that it might have been by Jongkind or Monet, if either had had Con- 
stable’s feeling for rich, juicy color. Here the rendering of individual figures, 
including foliage, is simplified in an extreme degree. The whole background 
is a positive design, deliberately achieved with the use of light, in a sort of 
irregular series of spots and designs of irregular shapes. This background- 
pattern is somewhat reminiscent of Bellini’s ‘‘Sacred Conversation.’’ The 
jewel-like color is again treated divisionistically. 


TURNER 


Calais Pier (N.G.). This early Turner reveals his preoccupation with the 
tawdry, the dramatic, the narrative, rendered, however, in the terms of good 
painting which are always his. This is a cheap melodramatic episode which 
is worthless as a work of art: it contains nothing original in conception, 
composition, color, or method of rendering. 

Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus (V.G.). In preoccupation with the tawdry 
and inessential this is practically a repetition of the ‘‘Calais Pier.” The con- 
trast between a stormy and a calm episode as compositional units of the picture 
appears, as so often in Turner’s work: it is a mere cliché. His use of light 
and color are as banal as the conception which they express, which lies 
outside the realm of art altogether. The color is a surface-play: it has no 
real richness or depth, and serves but feebly to compose the picture. 

Dido Building Carthage (N.G.). This is an imitation of Claude pure and 
simple. Turner’s lack of intelligence is shown by the fact that he obviously 
tried to simplify Claude, that is, to get the richness, splendor, majesty, grandeur, 
mystery of landscape by omitting so many details that there is very little 
representative element in the picture. But in Claude, the representative 


a OG Renee 463, 


element, while not accentuated, is always enough, and the effects after. 
which Turner was striving are felt as an all-pervasive quality; in Turner, 
the means and technique are paramount, and the effect is nil. 


TH. ROUSSEAU 


Edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau towards Bréle (L.). This picture 
would have been impossible without Claude. It is clearly a landscape and 
not a figure-piece. It has Claude’s glow, and a certain amount of his grandeur 
and majesty, though by no means so much. The deficiency is due to Rous- 
seau’s inability to portray the general feeling of landscape by the successful 
use of the painter’s means, so combined that no one element jumps out. In 
this painting, the resort to obvious means is striking. Instead of a natural 
vista, which we always find in Claude with noticeable economy of means, we 
have an artificial vista, obtained by an arching of trees which practically 
amounts to a frame. That is on the way to meretriciousness. In Claude, 
when trees are used, their conception is well-balanced, which makes them 
an integral part of the landscape, even if they are in the foreground and 
prominent. In this picture, while the paramount interest is carried by the 
above-mentioned specious means to the distant landscape, what feeling of 
mystery and grandeur there is in the landscape is confined to the glowing 
area. This, however, is nicely modulated with blue. Our interest in that 
slight and imperfectly rendered romantic distance is sharply competed for by 
the trees in the foreground, which are almost realistically painted. Compared 
with Claude’s, Rousseau’s means of portraying the glow tends towards a 
theatrical disbalance. In the Rousseau, the glow becomes something apart, 
instead of a pervasive element in the total effect, and the result is, when 
compared with Claude, an overaccentuation of one element, light. Even that 
is not Rousseau’s own. The result is a lack of unity in the largest sense. 

Nevertheless, the picture is pleasing. This is primarily because of its 
design, which is varied, nicely proportioned in the relation of the colors, with 
rather symmetrical distribution of masses, and good relations of planes. In 
this sense, the picture has both unity and variety. Compared with a Claude 
it is inferior because it lacks the larger unity referred to above. The obvious- 
ness of the means resorted to to form a design, the lack of real impressiveness, 
make us feel the landscape as something painted and not as something real, 
with a loss of the mystical quality which is so pronounced in Claude. There 
is a lack of reality in the conception and of either originality or honesty in 
the execution. 


MONET 


House Boat (B.F.) (No. 730). In this painting, we find a simple design 
in which convincing reality is rendered by a legitimate use of plastic terms, 
and which gives an aesthetic effect regardless of subject-matter. Line, light, 
color, space, are all adapted with consummate skill to the special purpose in 


464 ANALYSE SiO Tae AGL NaN ae 


mind, which is that of giving pictorial expression to the placidity and tran- 
quillity of a particular aspect of nature. In achieving his results Monet has 
drawn freely upon the technique which we see constantly in the best work 
of Velasquez, especially as simplified and modified by Manet. Light is used 
not only for modelling and giving due values to varied structures but as a gen- 
eral illumination; in each of its uses, this light makes a design which in itself 
is a contribution to the total aesthetic effect. Simplification is carried almost 
to the extreme, but each object depicted is rendered sufficiently to give the 
essential feeling of everything represented. Adventitious, irrelevant detail 
has been swept away, and this very process of simplification in every object 
represented in the painting is done with such balance and judgment that the 
simplification in itself is one of the sources of aesthetic pleasure. It is frankly 
a picture of a part of nature bathed in sunlight; the sunlight is an essential 
part of the picture, but it is not an overaccentuation. We feel the sunlight 
no more than we feel the perspective, the spatial intervals between the objects, 
the particular colors employed, or any of the other plastic elements. In short, 
the painting unifies into a composite whole, which has a conviction just as 
real of its kind as that which we should find, in a very different style, in a 
rendering by Cézanne of the same subject. 

Portrait of M. Cogneret (B.F.) (No. 725). Inthe portrait of M. Cogneret, 
which was painted in 1880, after the time Monet had perfected his method, we 
get an effect comparable to the best effects of portraiture by great artists. The 
technique here employed is still in general the application of bright and 
contrasting colors used in connection with light both as a general illumination 
and for local accentuations of color. But along with the effect of sunlight 
there is the rendering of the essential character of the sitter in such powerful 
terms that we are conscious of the effect and scarcely notice the technique. 
When we examine the technique we see that it has been skillfully adapted to 
the modelling of a figure of three-dimensional solidity, standing in relief 
against a background that merges with the figure into an organic whole. 
Instead of small color spots we find long streaks in the coat and shirt which 
give a feeling of reality to the texture more convincing than a detailed paint- 
ing would be. In the face, the color, light and line, are used with a swirl 
which recalls somewhat that of Rubens and is so successfully used that it gives 
the general effect of animation, power and strength to both the painting 
and the character of the sitter, but less so than one finds in a portrait by 
Cézanne. This portrait is interesting as showing what is perhaps the origin 
of the Van Gogh technique of painting in ribbon-like streaks. 

Madame Monet Embroidering (B.F.) (No. 197). In the portrait of 
Madame Monet embroidering, we see the Monet technique in its most char- 
acteristic form, used successfully in achieving plastic unity of a high degree of 
excellence. In the woman’s gown, the curtain, the two jardinieres, the 
carpet, in fact every object in the canvas, there is a richness of color 
obtained by the juxtaposition of spots of pure color. It gives not 
merely the surface effects of stuffs but rather the abstract quality of rich- 





Rousseau (le Douanier) Barnes Foundation 


33 ( 465 ) 





10h a8ed ‘stsAjeuy 


BISIULIA VI[OP O19Iq 





( 466 ) 





( 467 ) 


Barnes Foundation 


Charles Prendergast 





Manet Barnes Foundation 


( 468 ) 


RENOIR 469 


ness, which harmonizes well with the design considered from the purely 
plastic standpoint. The design is a unity of the successful use of line and 
space and color in a firmly knit composition, which has existence as a 
positive plastic form and moves us aesthetically without regard to what is 
portrayed. The essential feature of the picture is a sun-lighted room in 
which are a woman and various objects all rendered in terms of color. It is 
essentially a genre-picture, and we feel the basic human values of the general 
intime effect more than we notice there the color or light in the form of a 
technique. Monet’s form in this picture is that of the charm of an interior, 
and that charm is due to its rendering in a plastic form of considerable power. 


RENOIR 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF RENOIR’S TECHNIQUE 


The early work of Renoir, before the characteristic impressionistic tech- 
nique had developed, is in line with the great traditions of painting, but is 
already modified towards a positive personal expression. The development 
of his technique, as described herein, is based upon a study of the Renoirs 
in the Barnes Foundation Collection. 

‘“‘Le Petit Dejeuner’”’ (No. 45), (1871), shows the interior of a room 
with a man and a woman seated at a dining-table. The color is light, 
rich, juicy and is successfully used in organizing the canvas, though in a 
comparatively simple and conventional manner. There is no evidence of the 
impressionistic technique of juxtaposition of spots of color, but there is a 
modulation in the tones of the colors of the clothing and a decided tendency 
to the accentuation of light. There is a real but delicate solidity in the figures, 
achieved in the rather traditional Velasquez-Goya manner. It is somewhat 
suggestive of the best work of Goya and of Vermeer, but is free from the latter’s 
preoccupation with the rendering of textiles. There is a more realistic human 
quality to everything depicted, and the design is very much more original 
and free from conventional arrangements than in Vermeer or the other 
Dutch genre-painters. It shows Renoir’s fine grasp of the great Dutch- 
Spanish traditions as they were modified by Manet and endowed by Renoir 
himself with the feeling of lightness and delicacy characteristic of the Eight- 
eenth Century French painters, notably Chardin. It is characteristic of 
Renoir’s early work in the depiction of the events and scenes of every-day 
life. In all of these pictures there is a strong human appeal which is undoubt- 
edly due to the illustrative element. But all the figures, objects and scenes 
which constitute the narrative are rendered in adequate plastic terms, used 
to achieve a general design, so that the story is entirely subsidiary. In other 
words, we see the picture as a plastic form instead of a narrative. 

In the portrait of the ‘‘Girl with her Hands above her Head”’ (No. 9), 
(1875), we see his early characteristics at their best. The general color 
is blue and silver, with no admixture of the reds which later he made the 


470 AN ADS: FS. hO Ps aeAcUNS Teta Gres 


main color of his palette. The Velasquez-Goya tradition is even more 
delicatized and gains a particular quality by the use of Manet’s method of 
broad painting. The modelling is done by means of light and shade, with 
no evidence of the ribbon-like brush-strokes which he used later. The 
shadows are only slightly dark and are rendered in blues which are in them- 
selves lustrous and varied by subtle modulations by light. The Courbet 
tradition is evident, but Courbet’s heaviness is supplanted by a delicacy 
and charm. The diaphanous, light stuffs are of extraordinary richness. In 
all his early work, he obtains striking effects by painting a light textile over a 
darker one, in such a way that both the underneath and the upper stuffs have a 
richness and lightness and delicacy. Even at this period, when Renoir’s 
palette was comparatively limited, he shows the great mastery of color as 
the organizing factor in his design. The color is of varying degrees of con- 
trast, in areas of differing sizes and shapes. The backgrounds are, as always 
with Renoir, made interesting in themselves by various means. They form 
designs which are repeated in the lines defining contours, so that the design 
formed by the lines and color of the figure is duplicated in varying degrees 
of similarity and intensity in the background. The design of the picture 
is enriched by patterns in the background made up of linear and color ele- 
ments, in which the lines run at varying angles from the body. 

The picture representing two women seated in a garden (No. 289), 
(1875), is another interesting instance of Renoir’s enrichment of traditions 
by his personal touch. For instance, the Manet-like figure in the foreground 
has Renoir’s fluidity of line, color and mass, in place of Manet’s tendency to 
rigidity. The figure in the middleground is pure Renoir of the 1875 period. 
The part of the garden immediately behind the second figure is Manet’s 
conception in Renoir’s adaptation. The trees in the extreme background 
are rendered in the characteristic impressionistic technique but with scat- 
tered areas of intensified color which give to that background a depth and 
richness never present in Monet’s work. 

In the picture of the ‘Girl with the Jumping-rope’’ (No. 137), 
(1875), the modelling of the hands and face gives a Velasquez-Goya-like 
effect achieved by means of light and color. Bluish shadows make a color- 
design with the pink of the cheeks, the red of the lips, the dark blue of the 
eyes, the brown of the hair, the coral of the necklace, and the white of the 
guimpe. The impressionistic technique, visible in the blue gown, is used 
with a broadness suggestive of Manet. The delicacy of the white stuffs over 
the blue, in which an added reality is achieved in the envelope of white and 
its underlying blue, gives a fine feeling of solidity, richness, and charming 
reality. The background is made interesting by variations of color and 
contrasts in both the top and bottom, and in the right and left, all achieved 
by modulations of color with light. 

In ‘‘Femme au Crochét’’ (No. 108), (1876), we see the same general 
tendency as in the ‘‘Girl with her Hands above her Head,” but with an 
increased effect of realism. The face and hands obtain a sense of extraordi- 


RENOIR 471 


nary reality, delicacy and charm. The light extends from the hands up 
through the fichu to the face; it is then reduced in intensity through the 
front part of the hair, and culminates in a bright band of light constituting 
the comb. This design radiates to the right and to the left in an irregular 
way and forms a pleasing pattern. The modelling is still free from per- 
ceptible individual brush-strokes; but the juxtaposition of different colors 
by means of small brush-strokes is noticeable in the background, lending it 
a rather mottled appearance and tending towards the formation of lines and 
color-areas of contrasting directions and sizes, which merge harmoniously. 

In the portrait of the ‘‘Woman with her Elbow on a Piano”’ (No. 712), 
(1878), there is the same general blue and silver color-scheme, the same 
rendering of diaphanous stuffs in contrast with or overlying other and 
darker stuffs, but there is a decided change in the technique of the painting 
asa whole. This change consists in the use of the juxtaposed colors applied 
with perceptible small brush-strokes in all parts of the figure and background. 
These spots of color and brush-strokes are laid on in all possible directions, in 
varying degrees of length and breadth and of color-contrast, and form a 
background which is moving, rich, varied and unified: At a distance the 
general effect of the face and hands is of the rather flat modelling of Manet. 
The modelling in the face is executed by a series of small brush-strokes of 
colors ranging from white through various degrees of ivory and pink and 
blue; in other words, the impressionist technique has been adapted by Renoir 
to modelling. Color begins to become more varied, so that instead of the 
blue and ivory of the previous pictures, we see reds, yellows and browns, 
with admixtures of light to form a whole gamut of tones. 

The ‘‘Pourville Landscape’’ (No. 6), (1878), shows still further tech- 
nical developments. The same individual brush-strokes of contrasting or 
complementary colors are seen throughout the entire foreground and the 
middleground, by which an effect is obtained very similar to that of Monet’s 
characteristic work of this period. The effect is very much delicatized and the 
color is of a finer sensuous quality, much richer and deeper. From the fore- 
ground extending backward toward the middleground, the obvious technical 
means taper off in the extent of their employment so that in the middleground 
they are supplanted by broad areas of color in which no brush-strokes are 
perceptible. The same freedom from brush-strokes is noted in the mountains 
in the background and in the sky. In other words, Renoir here modifies the 
impressionists’ technique to his own ends and obtains richer and deeper 
effects than Monet ever achieved. The colors, chiefly various shades of 
red, blue and green, with a slight amount of yellow, have a surface richness 
expressed best by the words ‘‘creamy’’ and ‘‘velvety.”’ It is of extraordi- 
nary richness and depth. At this period, Renoir employed the impressionist 
technique in painting most of his landscapes; but this is easily understood 
if we remember that that technique was very much in vogue in the seventies 
and eighties, and was especially adapted to securing greatly varied effects 
of the play of sun upon the various colors of natural objects. 


472 ANALYSE S078 Pat NL NiGi 


The ‘‘Bougival Landscape’’ (No. 210) shows his characteristic technique 
as employed in the early eighties. The spots of broken color are juxtaposed 
with ribbon-like brush-strokes, of varying degrees of size and width, to obtain 
different effects. Sometimes the brush-strokes are almost as broad as those 
of Manet, and always with color of Renoir’s degree of richness and depth. 
The effect of this painting is obviously and frankly that of full sunlight upon 
multicolored objects in a summer landscape. While the effect is of extra- 
ordinary colorfulness, it lacks the creamy, velvety effect of the ‘‘Pourville’’ 
painting and is more like the typical surface effects which Monet and Sisley 
obtained in their paintings of that period. 

In all of the landscapes of the early eighties, the impressionist technique 
is followed with rather close fidelity but with such varied subject-matter that 
the compositions take on infinite variety. That is, we get a great diversity 
of both compositional and color effects, in contrast to Monet’s rather monot- 
onous ones. 

Renoir’s freedom from slavish adherence to a technique or manner is 
shown by the fact that during the early eighties when he was painting land- 
scapes with characteristic impressionistic technique, he produced a great 
number of figure-pieces in which the general effect is radically different from 
that of his landscapes of this period. Brilliant and varied colors which he 
had employed in his landscapes bathed with sun, are used here in even 
greater variety; there are also an infinite number of adaptations of that 
technique to obtain effects more suited to the realization of figures. In the 
painting, ‘‘ Madame Renoir and Baby’”’ (No. 15), (1881), the technique varies 
greatly: modelling and the surface of the faces and hands are done in the 
Velasquez-Manet manner but with brighter colors; the rendering of tex- 
tures in the baby’s dress, and in the material of the bowl and jar, is done by 
juxtaposed colors in short strokes; the floor is painted in broad, almost mono- 
chrome effects. In these different objects the technique is varied and modi- 
fied by the size of the color spots and the width and length of the brush- 
strokes. For instance, in the painting of the woman’s gown, the colors are 
applied in a Manet-like manner, but there is a difference from Manet’s tech- 
nique in the use of a richer structural color and an admixture of light to give 
an effect of iridescence. In the bowl and the jar the color juxtapositions vary 
from medium-size brush-strokes, as in the bowl, to juxtapositions of colors 
arranged with a tendency towards the circular that gives them an effect of 
color-volumes or masses. In the background the impressionistic technique 
is seen only upon close inspection and the brush-strokes are slighter, so that 
the general effect when looked at from a distance is of a fairly uniform but 
mottled and rich color. Even in the floor, where the general effect is of 
broad color-masses, a near view shows an admixture of various tones some- 
what in the impressionistic manner; the effect is of great richness and variety 
with no tendency towards monotony. The general effect of this picture is 
naturalistic. It is achieved, as above noted, by a successful union of the 
traditions of Velasquez, Manet and Monet, but all are so varied by Renoir’s 


RENOIR 473 


own treatment that the painting is a personal achievement of distinction 
and power. The subject-matter is trite, but the composition is so varied 
and all the plastic elements—line, light, color, mass, space—so skillfully 
handled that the triteness of the composition disappears before a wave of 
human values richly embodied in a strong and characteristic plastic form. 
The two full-length portraits of a ‘‘Boy”’ and ‘‘Girl’”’ (Nos. 325 and 
189), (1883), show a number of important technical achievements attained 
in the main through Renoir’s development of the impressionistic manner. 
Both of these pictures were portrait commissions, but instead of painting 
mere portraits Renoir conceived designs in which the sitter is only an element 
in a larger creation. The figure of the boy extends the total length of the 
canvas and is placed in the foreground; the background is made up of land- 
scape consisting of various small areas of water defined by rocky pieces of 
land. The line begins to approach the sharp character which it reached in 
his highly linear period of 1885, but is made slightly ragged by the flow of 
color over contour. Colors have become very brilliant, rich, deep and varied. 
The impressionistic color-technique is clearly evident throughout the canvas 
except in the face, where the modelling is of a rather uniform color-effect, 
obtained by means of light and color with shadows almost completely abol- 
ished. The boy’s clothes are painted everywhere in juxtaposed colors, with 
brush-strokes visible only upon close inspection, so that at a distance there 
is a composite effect of blue running into various shades. The effect of 
textures is attained by the use of light in combination with the colors, so that 
the broad general effect of the textile is felt rather than its individual pattern. 
The foreground, which has a feeling of solidity, is painted in the impression- 
istic manner, with color in broader brush-strokes than Claude Monet generally 
used, and tempered with light. The ground is of a general dark color, broken 
up into various blues and reddish-browns in such a way as to suggest the 
contours of objects. These quasi-objects in the foreground form a rhythm 
with the objects around them, and there is a tendency for the objects to 
assume the character of volumes which move backward in space. In the 
middleground this use of the color depicts solid objects like rocks and clumps 
of grass, which diminish in size but are increased in number towards the 
background; the effect is a rhythm that moves from the bottom part of 
the foreground into the deep middleground. This rhythm is increased in 
value by the fact that on the left side the objects are greater in number and 
lighter in color than the fewer and darker objects on the right side. Towards 
the horizon there is a comparatively flat area painted in the impressionistic 
manner though with concealment of the brush-strokes. Against the sky there 
are cliffs which form a duplication of the rocks in the middleground, but with 
an increase in size. Above the cliffs there is an area of sky practically free 
from clouds. In other words, the rhythm starts at the very front of the 
foreground and extends all the way to the background; it is enhanced in 
variety by color, as above noted, and by an area of flat landscape at the 
horizon, where the voluminal rhythms are resumed. The background of the 


474 ANALY SSO SPA Neh DING 


picture makes a charming composition in itself in which the cliffs function 
as a horizontal central mass, balanced in front by the blue of the sea and 
in the back by a blue of another quality which represents the sky. This pic- 
ture shows Renoir’s use of the impressionists’ technique to attain volumes 
which move rhythmically in deep space. But the objects have not yet 
become sufficiently solid, nor his handling of space-composition sufficiently 
skillful, to make the volumes function as they do in the later landscapes. 

In the companion picture (No. 189) to the ‘‘Boy,”’ a little ‘girl holding a 
parasol is standing in a landscape. The drawing and modelling in the figure 
are of the same linear character as in its companion picture and the same 
general color-scheme is employed; but the background, which in the boy’s 
picture was a landscape in which perspective gives the effect of real distance, 
here takes the form of a screen. There is more lustre to the color, and it 
is so handled by contrasts, gradations and admixtures of light, that the char- 
acter of the design is of a general iridescence that culminates in the interior 
of the parasol, a shimmering, animated unit of great power. The technique 
here is more impressionistic in its juxtaposition of colored spots and brush- 
strokes than it is in the companion picture, and the tendency to form volum- 
inal masses is less noticeable. 

In the middle eighties, Renoir worked for several years in a new and 
different manner. His line, which theretofore had been fluid and overflowing 
with color in the definition of contours, became sharply incisive, and the 
rich, juicy quality of his color was replaced with dryness and a tendency 
towards acidity. It has been customary for critics to describe this change 
as due to the influence of Ingres. In the painting ‘‘Woman Carrying a 
Baby” (No. 219) this sharply linear character and acidity of color are well 
represented. ‘The line is incisive in outlining contours of objects, but with 
all its sharpness it has a quality quite different from Ingres’s, both in itself 
and in its function in the canvas. In Ingres the line is used for the con- 
struction of linear patterns: it outlines the contours of objects, the colors of 
which are merely filled in between those lines. But in the work of Renoir 
at this period, the line functions only incidentally in the formation of linear 
designs. Its chief function is in the achievement of new color-forms which 
take on a linear character in comparison with the fluid, rather ragged char- 
acter of the line in his work before that period. In no part of this canvas 
or of the other paintings by Renoir of that time, do we find any decline in his 
ability to make color function as the structure of an object, or as the means 
of composing the picture. In the picture under discussion, the contours of 
the arm are sharply defined by incisive line, but if we consider that arm in 
its plastic rather than representative significance, we find that it is a color- 
volume with specific functions. It moves in space in a certain relationship 
with the woman’s body below the arm, with the chest and the back and 
shoulders of the woman, and with the mass made by the body of the child. 
In other words, we have a series of color-volumes or masses which function 
in the picture as three-dimensional objects, and these interrelate themselves 


RENOIR 475 


in space, and enter into the formation of a definite plastic unit. The same 
effect is noted in every object which is defined by the sharp line above men- 
tioned. Nothing could be further removed from the linear form of Ingres 
than the plastic form revealed in this painting. 

Here also, we find a technique representative of the best traditions of the 
past but always varied in Renoir’s characteristic manner and in harmony 
with his particular purpose. For instance, in the modelling of the sharply 
linear faces, the effect at a distance is that of a choice but delicate three- 
dimensional solidity, which seems to be achieved by the usual method of 
light and shade. When we examine the faces at close quarters we see that 
the modelling is not that of Velasquez, Manet or Leonardo, but is achieved 
by an individual use of color and light; in the case of the woman, by a broad 
sweep of pink in the cheek and jaw with a contrast of white in the area includ- 
ing the region of the eye and forehead. The line of demarcation between 
the woman’s nose and the background is achieved by means which are hardly 
discernible. 

The paintings of this period, which have been so much criticized as a 
retrogression in color and drawing, really represent some of the best of his 
entire career. The acid tendency of the color is more than offset by a lumi- 
nous, pastel quality that endows it with an appeal and a charm of a high 
degree. This color is employed with Renoir’s usual variation of technique. 
In the face and body the color is put on in rather broad areas with no tendency 
toward differentiation except by admixture of light, though this is sufficient 
to avoid monotony. In other parts of the canvas the impressionistic tech- 
nique is modified by foreshadowings of the narrow ribbon-like strips ‘which 
we shall see later to be the characteristic mark of Van Gogh. 

The painting of ‘‘Argentueil’’ (No. 126), (1888), is almost typically 
impressionistic in technique, but with Renoir’s characteristic adaptations. 
He is obviously interested in a design made up of horizontal lines of varying 
color, length, and breadth, with a sufficient number of lines meeting at right 
angles, and of other lines extending up vertically, to achieve an interesting 
and unusual pattern. The painting organizes around a boat which is painted 
in brilliant scarlet, and the organization is a color-form in which the red, 
blue, ivory and green are harmoniously blended. 

In the landscape, ‘‘Mt. Saint Victoire’’ (No. 288), (1889), the gen- 
eral effect is that of atmosphere suffused with sunlight, with a mountain 
in the distance. There is a haze in the background made up of overtones 
of brilliant reds, greens and yellows. In the foreground is an olive grove 
containing a score or more of small trees, the tops of which are a series of 
circular masses. Plastically, these trees function as circular colored volumes 
moving in deep space; they form a series of rhythms beginning with the 
small trees in front, increasing in volume in the larger trees to the rear, so 
that between the foreground and the background, which is represented by 
the foothills and the mountains, the space is filled with a succession of moving 
volumes of color. Those rhythms are duplicated by the more lightly repre- 


476 ANALY SES) FO ePrateNi yl aN ti 


sented clouds in the sky. The rhythm in the foreground makes a design 
which extends over that part of the picture, is broken up by a comparatively 
flat area in the middleground, is resumed by a series of larger rhythms made 
up of the foothills, and culminates in the rhythmic roll of the mountain. 
This mountain also is felt to be completely surrounded by space. The rhythm 
which embraces the volumes in the foreground is a heavy rhythm, broken 
up by the comparatively flat space in the middleground, as above mentioned; 
then the rhythm is resumed by the foothills, which are blurred in outline 
and more lightly rendered; this rhythm is continued by the mountain which 
is still more lightly rendered. The result is space-composition of a very 
high grade. 

The whole picture is a rhythmic flow of color. We see the same effect in 
nature, but we never see it in just that way nor in such rich, deep, iridescent 
scintillating, moving color. It may be looked upon as a landscape, but 
plastically it is more akin to the effects seen in the Renaissance painters 
who were primarily concerned with obtaining the effect of movement of 
rhythmic colored masses in deep space. Abstracted from all subject-matter 
the essential effect of the painting is akin to that in Titian’s ‘‘'Entombment.”” 
We feel the perspective as color, not as line. Although the effect is highly 
naturalistic it gets an increased degree of realism by reason of the artist’s 
ability to select the significant and construct something which is more moving 
than the original would be. 

The movement of volumes in deep space is the main motive in the ‘‘ Mt. 
Saint Victoire’”’ landscape and the volumes are of considerable solidity and 
rather well defined. It is obvious that to be able to render those volumes with 
that degree of solidity and compositional value, Renoir had gone through a 
period of perfection of technique to that particular end. The development 
of those voluminal masses to that degree of solidity and moving spatial 
relations is shown in the ‘‘Landscape with Figures’’ (No. 240), (1888), repre- 
senting a group of people under trees, and a lake with boats in the distance. 
The individual trees, as well as certain of their branches, form voluminal 
masses that move in and around each other in deep space, as in the ‘‘ Mt. 
Saint Victoire’ landscape. But here the volumes are less defined in their 
contour and are more floating, vaporous, of less solidity. Another element 
in the same motive is formed by a clump of trees in the middleground which 
functions as a larger volume of comparatively little solidity. All these 
volumes taken together move in a series of rhythms all over the canvas and 
are repeated by the voluminous masses of white clouds in a blue sky, which 
add the element of variety by means of contrast in color. The impression- 
istic technique, in its typical form, is used only in isolated parts of the canvas. 
In the masses formed by the leaves of the trees and by the clouds, the brush- 
strokes are noticeable only upon close inspection, so that the effect is that of 
comparatively solid uniform color. In these two paintings, ‘‘Mt. Saint Vic- 
toire’’ and the ‘‘Landscape with Figures,’’ we see for the first time Renoir’s 
adaptation of the technique to the portrayal of the grandeur and majesty 


RENOIR 477 


that characterizes the work of Claude. There is present also the spirit of 
local place which Constable rendered, so that the composite effect of the 
landscape is the spirit of local place combined with much of the epic grandeur 
of Claude’s work. This vastness Renoir attained in a high degree in a great 
variety of landscapes painted at the end of his career. In these landscapes 
we notice also the added quality of drama which Hobbema attained by the 
use of contrasting masses, particularly in the sky. 

In the early nineties Renoir so varied the impressionistic methods that he 
gave a series of different effects in which the technique is scarcely percep- 
tible. In the ‘‘Nude Standing in the Water’’ (No. 301), (1892), the whole 
rendering is so etheralized and delicatized that it becomes sheer beauty, 
and the painting seems to have been breathed upon the canvas. Contours 
are defined by lines which retain some of the sharpness of the work of the 
middle eighties, but the line is merged with color that overflows the con- 
tours and takes away sharpness. The background takes the form of a screen 
rather than of distance, although perspective, rendered in terms of color, is 
clearly perceptible. The colors here are light and delicate blues, silver, and 
pinks. The great variety of contrasts and juxtapositions of subtle colors 
and a complete absence of evidence of technique, give an effect of great 
charm. 

At this period Renoir was very much interested in the painting of quite 
young girls, and the same model appears in a whole series of paintings. There 
is never duplication of the effects in their entirety although there is the same 
general expression of youthful, feminine charm. In two separate heads of 
this period (Nos. 299 and 302) the same effect of delicacy and reality is 
attained in an entirely different design. The color-forms in each are differ- 
ent and the impressionists’ technique has been so toned down that it is per- 
ceptible only in isolated areas; the colors are applied in brush-strokes that 
are imperceptible in some cases and quite broad in others. In all of these 
the basic character of flesh is rendered, but by interpretation and not by 
literal imitation. 

In the early nineties Renoir continued his efforts to make masses of color 
function as volumes moving in deep space, and he obtained a great variety 
of effects. For instance, in the ‘‘Nude Seated on a Bench” (No. 274), the 
background is broken up by subtle gradations of line and color into a series 
of volumes which are placed in definite space-relations with the objects in 
front and back of them. This design is duplicated by vague trees and color- 
spots, which have apparently no representative value, and are very much 
less solid. The rhythm starts from immediately back of the nude and is 
continued with diminishing intensity until the distance fades off into infinity 
by virtue of light, delicate color. This painting shows also the appearance 
in Renoir of the marked distortions which he used so much in most of his. 
later works. The nude’s foot is out of all proportion to the graceful well- 
formed figure, and the arms seem to be almost as long as the legs. During 
the nineties, this distortion was gradually increased until in the late nineties 


478 ALNGALEVYUSi Sie) hur ea debe 


faces and other parts of the body, viewed as representation, became positive 
disfigurements. 

In the ‘‘Girl Seated under a Tree’’ (No. 255), the features in the face are 
scarcely distinguishable: the right arm looks like a vague mass of color and 
light with little resemblance to an arm, and the left arm is so broken in con- 
tinuity that only part of it seems like a solid object. Yet that figure func- 
tions as a plastic unit with overwhelming power, and takes its place in rela- 
tion to other masses represented by a tree and two gate-posts. These objects 
move rhythmically in deep space, along with the volumes formed by trees. 
Here the impressionistic technique is employed in infinite variety with the 
light so predominating as to form a very rich and bizarre design, of particular 
animation, which adds much to the total aesthetic effect. 

In the picture of the ‘‘Woman and Child Seated under a Tree,” in front 
of an olive grove with sea and hills in the distance (No. 257), Renoir’s color 
has reached such a degree of vatied and intensified richness that it effects 
a harmony comparable to the richest musical symphony. We note the 
same movement of volumes in deep space attained by the trees depicted in 
the impressionistic manner and all the elements—color, line, mass, space— 
are deliberately bent to design. Viewed at a distance the representation is 
sufficient to give a sense of reality in the figures, but viewed at close quarters 
these figures are seen to be color-spots with no attempt at rendering of details. 

This probably is the most important painting achieved by Renoir up to 
this date and shows the realization of plastic values of such infinite variety 
and great power that he is now to be placed ina class with Giorgione in point 
of monumental plastic effects. 

From 1900 on Renoir’s mastery of his medium was complete and he used 
it in the depiction, in solid plastic form, of the human values intrinsic to 
the various events of life. These events are rendered, never literally, but 
imaginatively, and in them color attains to heights never achieved by any 
painter before or since. 

In ‘‘The Embroiderers’”’ (No. 239), (1900), one of whom is seated at a 
table, the work of the seventies, eighties and nineties culminates in the 
achievement of new forms. The figure at the right realizes all the fine tex- 
tural effects and solidity found in his work of the seventies, but is made 
more colorful and more varied by a more skillful use of technique. In the 
seated girl embroidering, there is the delicacy and charm of the period of the 
early nineties, but it is increased in solidity by the structural use of color. 
In the girl standing at the back there is a tendency towards deformation 
and blurring of outline seen in the work of the late nineties. The impres- 
sionistic technique here is still in evidence in various stages of perceptible 
brush-work and size of color-spots. In the girl seated at the table, the 
strokes are broad and fairly regular in one place in the gown over the chest, 
while in the part of the gown which extends from that point up to the neck 
the juxtaposition of colors is done in strokes which take many different 
directions and make a design in contrast with the vertical strokes of the 


RENOIR 479 


first part of the gown mentioned. In the gown of the woman seated at the 
right, the color is applied in even broader strokes than Manet’s, and in the 
sleeve it gives an effect not unlike Tintoretto’s. In the figure standing at 
the back, the juxtaposed colors are done with a swirl, in a circular and broad 
manner that adapts them very successfully to the achieving of three-dimen- 
sional solidity and circumambient space. 

This picture shows, in the faces of the two figures to the right, the deep 
red which Renoir later used to achieve a new color-form quite his own. The 
result is a real structural solidity, superior to anything ever achieved by 
Rubens. 

In the ‘‘Seated Nude” with elbow on the ground (No. 217), (1910), 
Renoir has taken a long step towards the use of his deep red in the form 
used so successfully and in many variations in all his later work. Here the 
figure has a monumental solidity through a representation of flesh which has 
no resemblance to real flesh in color, but has a greater feeling of reality than 
flesh itself ever has. The modelling is done with light and color, and achieves 
a smoothness approaching the effect of a Titian or Giorgione, but with a 
colossal solidity that is a positive distortion. The shadows are brown rather 
than blue as in his early work, so that the modelling approaches more nearly 
that of the old masters. Here his interest was as always preéminently that 
of design. In this case the design is formed by the deep red of the figure 
against a background generally green, rendered with almost typical impres- 
sionistic technique, but made very animated and interesting by a great variety 
of modulations and subtle color-contrasts. 

‘“‘Nude Seated Near a Tree’? (No. 284), (1912), the color is some- 
what intensified, and the density and voluptuousness of the figure are less 
conspicuous, by reason of its entering into a more complex design. The 
modelling and the landscape are treated in the same manner as in the 1910 
““Nude” (No. 217), but with an added note of indefinite, vaguely felt per- 
spective going off into infinity. This perspective is rendered in terms of pure 
color, rather than with lines. Here the impressionistic technique is varied 
from its characteristic manner in some parts of the landscape, and is employed 
in rendering distance by contrasts of color so subtle that the means are scarcely 
perceptible. 

Concerning the nudes of this class, the uninformed public expresses its 
displeasure by saying that the nudes look like pieces of raw beef. The mis- 
take consists in interpreting them as representative, instead of as plastic, 
forms. 

In all this late work Renoir approaches nearer to the Venetians in the use 
of color. There is a circumambient glow of great richness that prevades the 
whole canvas. He is gradually approaching the fundamental grace and 
charm of the ancient Greek statues, but he is doing it with a new use of color, 
which adds a more realistic tendency to the classic influence than in the 
work of any previous painter. 

Beginning with the work of the nineties, Renoir showed an increasing 


480 ANADY SEOs FRAN TaN Go 


interest in the value of distortions and departure from naturalistic color in 
the achievement of a richer and more moving design. He had not lost the 
ability to achieve the results which were characteristic of each of his earlier 
pictures, namely, lustrous, rich delicate textural effects, feeling for character 
in faces, terse expressive line to portray movement, feeling for spirit of place 
in interiors, appreciation of the grandeur and majesty of landscape. All of 
these characteristics which form, more or less, the distinctive marks of his 
previous periods, went into solution in his later work and became less con- 
spicuous. At all stages of his career he employed the Rubens tradition as it 
came through the Eighteenth Century painters, notably Fragonard. Through- 
out his entire work we see the Rubens use of color, line and light to produce 
a swirl which in the hands of Renoir was modified by the impressionist tech- 
nique and adapted to new monumental effects. For instance, this swirl as 
it emerged modified by Renoir, assumed the character of a three-dimensional 
mass which he adapted to the foliage of trees and other objects, to give the 
effect of movement in deep space. 

In the “‘Bathers’”’ (No. 709), (1916), Renoir’s technique has become 
perfected so that this painting may be said to represent the consumma- 
tion of his power. He has become a colorist of the first rank in the largest 
and best sense of that term: he makes use of color to tie the various 
compositional elements together and form a picture which is organically 
whole. Color is used successfully for every conceivable purpose, so that 
new results are achieved. The figures have three-dimensional solidity, and, 
while far from literally representative of natural objects, are sufficiently 
representative to make them of human interest. In other words, they are 
not human beings but creations attained by the use of color, line and light 
with distortions in every possible degree of departure from the normal. Per- 
spective is rendered in terms of color; solid, colored objects, figures, trees, 
etc., move in a space which is itself colored, and that color in both elements 
gives a new richness to the spatial intervals. This is space-composition of the 
highest grade. The figures have achieved a form and strength reminiscent 
of the ancient Greeks, but they are richer in originality, in departure from the 
conventional. Composition in its general sense has attained the heights 
represented by Giotto in both the Assisi and Padua frescoes. From any 
object in the composition, the eye can move in any direction from that point 
and find units which relate themselves rhythmically. Composition has 
become a series of rhythmic units moving in deep space; each of these units 
is resolvable into line, color, mass and space, which constitute rhythmic 
designs in themselves. These rhythmic designs enter into relations with 
each other to constitute plastic form in its highest estate. This painting 
has a richness and depth of color which suffers nothing in comparison with 
the best work of the great Venetians. It represents supreme artistry in the 
use of all plastic means. These means were used in a manner which con- 
stituted a departure from the traditions so that a new and original plastic 
form, which is distinctively Renoir’s, is created. This painting is the proof 


RENOIR 481 


of the absurdity of the statement that Renoir represents a consummation in 
the adaptation of the traditions of the past, rather than an original force in 
painting. In point of fact, his originality exceeds greatly that of Cézanne. 
The reason why this originality is not evident is that his means are so subtly 
employed that their significance is appreciated only when one has studied 
the whole tradition of painting. Cézanne, too, undoubtedly had great origi- 
nality, but his is obvious and Renoir’s is subtle. 


Bathers (No. 709). The figures are reminiscent of the Greek statues of 
about 400 B.c. The classic influence was taken as a motive for the elabora- 
tion of a symphony in plastic forms, in which color is a very powerful factor. 
We are reminded also of Rubens, but again with something added that gives 
an increased appeal. In the same way do we feel the contribution of both 
Boucher and Fragonard, but it is greatly increased in power. The classic 
influence, as one finds it in the Greek vases of the best period, is seen in the 
fine linear quality both in the isolated figures and in the grouping of figures. 
The Greek line has lost its sharp, incisive character and has attained a new 
quality of strength. It is more broken, more varied in length, so that it is 
less continuously flowing than in the Greeks. The increased strength in the 
linear quality is due to the union of line and powerfully moving color, with 
consequent freedom from linear sharpness. 

The influence of Rubens is notable in the voluptuousness of the figures 
and in the use of a swirl made up of line, color and light. It differs from 
Rubens in the use of light, in a reduction in the intensity of the movement 
and drama, and in a new and more appealing quality in the color. 

The influence of Boucher is apparent in the enamel or porcelain-like quality 
of the surfaces, which are made stronger in Renoir by more powerful draw- 
ing, into which enters a deeper and richer color. 

The influence of Fragonard is apparent in the general feeling of airy, 
light gracefulness, which is increased in strength by richer colors of great 
structural solidity and of more pervasive effect in composing the picture. 

In short, Renoir has taken the forms of the above predecessors and so 
modified each one of the plastic constituents that a new form has arisen 
which is richer, more powerful, more convincing of reality. All of those 
predecessors derive from the great Venetians, notably Giorgione, Titian, 
Tintoretto; in power Renoir has approached nearest to the original sources. 
In this picture the most noticeable general influence is, in several respects, 
that of Giorgione. First: the general effect is that of the arcadian, elysian 
feeling noted in the ‘‘Concert Champétre;” here, however, it is more free 
from the influence of classic myth and tied more to reality as we know it. 
There is a more this-worldly character in the figures, a lesser idealization of 
landscape, trees, the conventional classic quality. There is also reminiscence 
of Giorgione in the very powerful effect of color in unifying, composing, tie- 
ing together the various units into an organic, plastic whole. The Venetian 
glow is supplanted here by a richer pervasive color, of greater appeal, which 


482 ANALYSE Sv OF ee Bo ATN LNG GS 


is used in combination with light and line to produce swirling masses or 
volumes that give a more dramatic character to the painting. This painting 
shows that Renoir’s forms are of volumes moving in deep space. It is true 
that Renoir is rich in the production of linear rhythms, but those rhythms 
function inseparably with the rhythms of volumes; in other words, line, 
color and light are blended into the formation of volumes which are related 
to one another in an orderly manner in deep space. This painting is far 
removed from literal representation of subject-matter. The faces are repre- 
sented in a very broad manner: the features are only indicated by broad 
notes of light, color or line which do not represent details of the faces or 
other parts of the body, but give instead the effect of solid underlying struc- 
tural form. We recognize them as forms or figures, but with no literal like- 
ness. We note the tendency towards distortion which has figured so largely 
in the moderns, who derived it chiefly from El Greco. This distortion would 
be grotesque or monstrous if we attempted to interpret it by any standards 
of literal likeness. For instance, in the two standing figures at the right of 
the canvas, the arm of the nude seems to be twice as long as the leg, and 
from the shoulder to the end of the hand has no likeness to a natural human 
arm. That arm flows into and becomes continuous with the arm of the 
clothed figure, and the two together form a mass in which the separation 
between the two elements can be recognized only by the closest scrutiny. 
The nude’s right arm and the clothed figure’s left arm form one line in which 
the contours are recognizable; the nude’s left arm and the clothed figure’s 
right arm make a mass which looks exactly like the neighboring tree trunk, 
in which no distinct features can be discerned. The obvious purpose of 
these anatomical liberties is to achieve a design made up of the masses of 
those two figures, and this design is a unit in the larger design made up of 
the neighboring trees and landscape. The standing nude to the left is a 
more literal reproduction, but it too has distortions, especially in the left 
hip, which make it look like no normal human figure, and yet make it function 
powerfully in its plastic relations. In all of these figures there is an ease, 
a graceful fluid charm which is comparable to that of Poussin. That fluidity 
is part of the general rhythmic flow, which extends from one mass to the 
other and ties up the various units into a harmonious ensemble. This rhythm 
is more of color than of line, but is just as much a rhythm of volumes. The 
abstract feeling rendered by these rhythms is that of grace, delicacy and 
charm. Renoir has here attained to supreme heights in the use of color, 
superior to Delacroix’s and Rubens’s, and comparable to that of Giorgione 
and Titian. 

The color is used in quite an individual way both structurally and in 
organizing the canvas. There is a larger mixture of light than in any of his 
predecessors, and it is matched with an equally strong structural and organic 
use of color. The light forms a design in itself, which constitutes an impor- 
tant factor in the total aesthetic effect of the painting. This use of light 
is especially noticeable in the modelling, which gives a firm three-dimensional 


RENOIR 483 


solidity as real and convincing in its setting as the more solid three-dimen- 
sional modelling of Cézanne’s figures. The modelling also forms a pattern, 
an appealing design made up of line, light, color. This constitutes decora- 
tion of the highest quality: the decoration is merged firmly with color used 
structurally so that the unit is both decorative and structural and constitutes 
form in its richest estate. These patterns of light are found in every part 
of the canvas: they reinforce both line and color everywhere, in the flesh, in 
the gowns, in the trees, in the bushes, the sky; they are never of equal inten- 
sity or solidity, but graduate from their strongly structural value in the main 
figures in the foreground, become less in intensity in the middleground, and 
diminish to lightness in the background and in the sky. In all degrees of 
intensity they have a reality and a fitness to the particular use to which they 
are put. 

Line: In the nude at the left, which at a distance seems to be sharply 
outlined in its contours, the line is never continuous or isolated when looked 
at at close range. Color overflows the contours, yet there is never any ques- 
tion of definition between the various objects thus separated from each other. 
The drawing is done by color more than by line: color and line are merged with 
light to give a form of drawing which is Renoir’s own and which is more 
expressive and more aesthetically moving than any sharp line of Raphael or 
Ingres. Shadows as shadows are practically abolished and their equivalent 
given by contrasting colors. 

Perspective: Literal reproduction of perspective as we see it in nature 
does not exist in this picture, yet the centre of the canvas gives the effect of 
great distance. We are not conscious of that distance as such, and we are 
never quite sure where the horizon and the sky meet. But each object is 
represented upon a plane of its own, and these planes are infinite in number 
between the foreground and the background. There is no line which may 
be said to be used directly in the production of the illusion of perspective. 
Perspective, in short, is so rendered in terms of color that we do not feel it 
as perspective. 

The number of color-forms in this picture is literally innumerable; from 
one end of the canvas to the other they vibrate, scintillate, dance, move, in 
relations with each other; they are not surface decorations but are solid forms 
of perceptible three-dimensional quality. Any one of these forms when 
abstracted is seen to be an independent entity and not a mere duplication of 
another color-form. The forms are series of color-chords which are richer, 
more varied, and more solidly real than those used by any other painter, not 
excepting the great Venetians. 

Composition: There is no tendency in this picture to the usual central 
mass and bilateral symmetry. The composition is fluid: it may be taken 
up at any point and carried around in a circular or elliptical manner, such 
as to relate all the figures and objects in a continuous, rhythmic, organic 
whole. Any figure selected at random is duplicated symmetrically in a 
corresponding position on the other side of the canvas. For instance, if 


484 ANALYSE SiMOFav At N DEN Gs 


we select the standing figure at the extreme right, symmetry is satisfied by 
either the large standing nude on the left or by the nude whose arms join 
those of the clothed figure. If the left standing nude is selected, its cor- 
responding duplicate is found in either the nude on the right or the clothed 
standing figure on the right, or the two taken as a unit. If we wish to select 
a central figure we may choose either of the two small indistinct nudes in the 
middle background, and find correspondingly balanced figures or subjects 
among the various elements to the right or to the left. Another series of 
compositional relations is that made up by the three figures on the right, 
the standing nude on the left, close to the reclining nude at her feet, 
and two nudes near the centre of the picture; these stand in fine balancing 
rhythmic relations with each other, with differences in detail that constitute 
rich variety. Figures in any part of the canvas may be considered as masses, 
and they form rhythmic compositions in which they are related to masses 
made up of the trees or bushes. This great variety of compositional selec- 
tions shows Renoir’s extraordinary versatility, his infinite resources in making 
use of the compositional possibilities. In the composition alone it is a ques- 
tion whether Giorgione ever showed equal resources in point of variety 
and ability to effect compositional unity by the effective use of plastic means. 
The painting as a whole is of overwhelming richness, and the richness is not 
only of color but of all the plastic elements—line, space, light, mass, compo- 
sition. The richness is not on the surface even though the surface is of 
extreme richness. The richness is all embracing and all pervasive, and is 
effected by the successful use of color, the most potent and at the same time 
the most difficult of all the plastic means. 


CEZANNE 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF CEZANNE’S TECHNIQUE* 


The earliest work of Cézanne was so strongly influenced by Courbet and 
Delacroix that it is not to be considered seriously as representative of his 
plastic form, except that even at that early date he showed particular ability 
to endow with great strength anything he painted. His early paintings done 
under the influence of Delacroix are highly romantic. Those done under the 
influence of Courbet are given quite a naive feeling by Cézanne’s use of dis- 
tortions and by his inadequate and groping use of the plastic means. In all 
of this early work, the painting is heavy and thick, but the color has the 
force and strength which it has always had. His early impressionistic works 
are as characteristic of that technique as are the paintings of Monet, Pissarro 
and Sisley, but with important modifications which gave them a distinctive 
feeling and strength of their own. 


* All the Cézannes upon which these notes are based are in the collection of 
the Barnes Foundation. 


CEZANNE 485 


The most powerful and lasting influence upon Cézanne was that exercised 
by Pissarro, with whom he associated to some extent in his early years. From 
Pissarro he took over the impressionists’ technique in all its phases—bright 
color applied in juxtaposed spots, visible brush-strokes, and the direct effects 
of sunlight upon objects. His work at this period has a close resemblance 
to that of Pissarro in the use of all the pictorial means, but it has much greater 
plastic strength. This technique was modified in all its aspects to such an 
extent that in his later work it is to be recognized only in solution, and 
is merged with the other influences, notably those of Michel Angelo and El 
Greco. 

Cézanne learned from Pissarro the effect of color in organizing the compo- 
sition; in addition he followed Pissarro’s drawing, which is especially strong 
by reason of the fusion of light, line and color, all used in a broad and loose 
manner. 

““The Estaque Landscape’’ (No. 208) is a typical impressionist picture. 
The color, in its variety, sensuous appeal and manner of use, is almost a 
duplicate of Pissarro’s. His drawing is of the same rugged character and 
there is the same application of the closely juxtaposed colors applied in small 
irregular rectangular spots with the brush-strokes making the lines of demar- 
cation between the spots. Viewed at a distance these areas give the effect of 
one color, as they do in Monet’s best work; but to these spots there is an 
added depth and richness and an effect more definitely contributory to the 
actual structure of objects than we find in Monet; they are akin to the smaller 
effects in Pissarro, except that in the case of Cézanne there is a greater degree 
of solidity communicated to the objects depicted. Direct sunlight is used 
both as a general illumination and in spots focussed on juxtaposed color-areas, 
so that the total effect of the light is impressionistic. This painting compared 
with Pissarro’s ‘‘Garden with Houses’”’ (No. 324) shows the identity of the 
technique, the somewhat greater solidity of Cézanne’s objects, and his grop- 
ing efforts towards Pissarro’s skillful use of paint. 

The next noticeable progress of Cézanne towards a more personal achieve- 
ment is revealed in the ‘‘Provencal Landscape’’ (No. 300), representing 
mountains in the distance and a curiously placed diagonal road in the 
foreground. The general color-effect is similar to that of the Pissarro but 
with tremendous strides toward the realization of Cézanne’s characteristic 
form. Here we note the same individual brush-strokes of small juxtaposed 
colors, but there is less tendency to modify those small spots of color with 
contrasting colors. We see also broad areas of uniform color depicting 
larger spaces than any in the previous work of Cézanne or the impres- 
sionists. In both the small and the large areas of color, the color is modu- 
lated and interspersed with light so that the technique in both aspects is 
definitely impressionistic. This painting shows the tendency, which Cézanne 
developed later, to render a crystal-clear atmosphere with such a skillful use 
of general illumination that it has led critics to make the erroneous statement 


34 


486 ANALY SES a10 Fb TEN on Nites 


that Cézanne did not paint direct sunlight. This atmosphere is occupied 
by various objects which are completely surrounded by space, and the result 
is space-composition of a high order. 

Both color and drawing, while still basically those of Pissarro, are here 
used to produce more powerful effects than those in the work of any pure 
impressionist. The color is deeper, more glowing and more integrally a part 
of the structure of objects; it is more firmly knit into various units that make 
up different parts of the canvas; and it has attained a uniformly strong and 
rhythmic flow that binds all parts of the canvas together into a powerful gen- 
eral design. For instance, in the background to the right there is a succes- 
sion of yellow rhythms alternating with green rhythms which vary from the 
horizontal to the angular and curvilinear. They start in the middle distance 
with a comparatively broad area of yellow and meet a small but very narrow 
green rhythm; they are continued by a rhythm made up of an admixture 
of green and yellow, followed by a deeper irregular green area with an island 
of yellow in the middle; then another admixture of green and yellow enters, 
and so on up to the lower mountain on the right side of the canvas. The 
general tendency of these rhythms on the right side of the canvas is hori- 
zontal; on the left, the rhythms consist of a series of alternating green and 
yellow narrow bands which radiate from the centre, somewhat like the spokes 
of a wheel, for some distance, and then become generally horizontal. The 
area between the volumes on each side constitutes a central rhythm, con- 
trasting in shape and direction with both the left and the right sides, and 
binding the two parts of the canvas together in a perfect whole. These 
rhythms, reinforced by subsidiary rhythms formed by the variously dis- 
tributed houses and trees of fine three-dimensional solidity, give an unusually 
dynamic character to that part of the landscape. 

The general design owes its particular quality to the contrast of this 
highly varied and rhythmic naturalistic landscape with a foreground which 
is a solid mass of general monochrome green, divided by a yellow road which 
extends from the centre of the foreground diagonally to the right and meets 
the middleground almost at the end of the painting. The rich, deep green 
of this landscape is made more interesting by interspersions of light, making 
a mottled general effect with several accentuations of broad lighter green 
areas of irregular shape. 

This painting shows Cézanne’s ability to grasp the effects which make 
natural landscape moving and to increase those effects by rhythmic use of 
color, mass, light and line. The aesthetic power is enhanced by means of a 
design that consists of a contrast between an area which, both in color and 
its simple manner of treatment, is totally different from the infinite variety 
of the background. Sunlight floods the picture and is focussed on many 
points, so that it produces an appealing and varied subsidiary design. We 
do not feel the light especially as sunlight, because it is blended and adapted 
to new and special ends. Nevertheless, the picture is impressionistic: all its 


CEZANNE 487 


parts are realized by means of the impressionistic technique, infinitely varied 
and adapted to particular purposes. 

In the best work of Cézanne in his late period, we feel the mastery in the 
use of paint to render plastic values of significance and deep power. It is 
only by studying his earlier work that we realize what a constant struggle it 
was for him to attain that degree of skill. The actual painting in the late 
work is thin, but is more adequate to its purpose. In much of the work of 
his early and middle periods the paint is of varying degrees of thickness— 
sometimes as thick as Van Gogh’s. This thick paint does give the effect of 
solidity, but the means are more sculptural than pictorial. In the ‘‘Still- 
Life” (No. 190), representing a table with plate and fruit against a back- 
ground of flowered drapery and a large plant, the rim of the plate is repre- 
sented by a line of heavy paint which extends above the surface of the table. 
The modulation in the spots of color by which the peaches and the pear are 
rendered solid is also done with thick paint. 

In the “‘Still-Life’’ (No. 329) with a table upon which is a skull, the paint 
1s much less thick than in the previously mentioned still-life. In all these 
thickly painted pictures, the total effect is that of heaviness; this is increased 
by the thick lines defining the contours of objects. The ‘‘Still-Life’”’ (No. 
190), first mentioned, compared with the portrait ‘‘Femme au Chapeau 
Vert” (No. 141), shows the heavy general quality of the still-life. In both 
of the still-lifes (Nos. 190 and 329), we see upon close inspection the impres- 
sionistic use of light and juxtaposed colors and brush-work, though modified 
and adapted to special ends. For instance, in the peaches, contrasting 
colors are applied side by side in brush-strokes varying from a short touch 
to a swirl of considerable size. In each case the point nearest the eye is a 
high-light, and all the other parts of the objects, except those quite remote, 
are tinged with lights of varying degrees of intensity. 

The difference between the heavy painting and the light painting is easily 
perceived by touch. If the hand is passed over the portrait, the surface is 
found to be free from projections of pigment, while in the still-life with peaches 
and pear the projecting areas of paint are felt in many places. 

In the larger ‘‘Still-Life’’ (No. 23), the painting is rather thick in some 
places and absolutely smooth in others. This picture, therefore, represents 
a further stage in Cézanne’s progress toward a fully pictorial, non-sculptural 
technique. All the fruits are much larger than their prototypes in nature: 
they are not copies but elements in design. Here, as always in Cézanne, the 
prime element in design is the use of color in both its structural and its com- 
positional role. The technique has departed so far from that of impres- 
sionism that the total effect is different; but each painted area, when examined 
at close quarters, shows the divided color applied in brush-strokes. Some- 
times these are obvious, sometimes they are so merged in broad areas, modelled 
by means of light, as to be scarcely distinguishable. The volumes are 
more firmly placed in deep space than in the previous picture, so that it is 
fair to infer that with his progress in the use of his technique his command 
of space-composition became greater. 


488 ANALY SES) 0 Ar IN -TIEN Gio 


In the ‘‘Still-Life’’ (No. 711) (see detailed analysis, page 496), all effect 
due to the impasto itself has disappeared and the actual coat of paint is 
very thin. The hard outlines of objects have been replaced by ragged lines 
of which color is the principal constituent. Consequently the effect is that 
of extreme lightness and delicacy, of solid three-dimensional qualities in 
the objects, and of great general strength and power. This represents 
the perfection of his method. 

The great contrast between the technique of Cézanne’s early work and 
that of his perfected period is shown by a comparison of the two groups of 
nudes, painted respectively in the early and late periods. 

In the one (No. 93), representing ‘‘Five Nudes”’ with a central standing 
figure, the painting of all objects is quite thick, and in some points, noticeably 
in the hair and in the leaves of the trees, it reaches the impasto effects of the 
early impressionists. Here the line defining contours is more accentuated, is 
perceptibly thick, and is less merged with the color. There is convincing 
three-dimensional solidity and effect of reality in the figures, but the general 
effect of the picture is that of the heaviness which comes with the use of 
thick paint. Also, the design, while strong and finely realized, tends toward 
the conventional central mass with balancing figures to right and left. The 
impressionists’ technique is here used in almost the manner of Monet, with 
small spots of color and obvious brush-work, yet even here it is tempered with 
modifications in various parts of the canvas which show Cézanne’s ability 
to use means to his own ends. 

In the group of ‘‘Men Bathers’’ (No. 101), the impasto quality of the 
paint has completely gone, the figures have even greater solidity than in 
the early work, the color is more luminous and firmer structurally, and the 
general effect is that of lightness. This painting represents Cézanne’s work 
at the height of his power. The technique is clearly impressionistic in some 
areas; in others the means are visible only upon close inspection, and are so 
fundamentally modified in all their constituents that the general effect from 
a distance has no resemblance to the impressionistic. Cézanne has here 
progressed toward the ideal of composition, which consists in abolishing 
conventional standards of symmetrical balance: he has achieved a composi- 
tion which organizes rhythmically from any point of the canvas selected. 
His command over space is greatly increased, so that the spatial intervals are 
a series of harmonious rhythms, and the effect of infinity in the background 
is attained by means that baffle analysis. 

Cézanne’s work can be appreciated best by banishing from the mind all 
idea of representation and confining attention to his primary purpose, which 
was to establish a series of relationships between objects in space, that make 
up a unified plastic design. His genius for producing moving designs of an 
unusual character is comparable to that of the best men, not excepting Giotto. 
This feeling for the dynamic relationships between objects, and the ability to 
coérdinate the resulting forms into a design, was apparently innate in Cézanne, 
for we see it even when, in his earliest work, his use of the plastic means was 


CEZANNE 489 


halting and inadequate. The method by which he achieved his design was 
that of distortion, not only in faces and other parts of the human body, but 
in his use of all the plastic means, including line, space, mass. The distor- 
tions are fundamental, that is, they concern the planes themselves, so that 
these are changed in all conceivable directions away from the normal. The 
interpenetration of these distorted planes builds up radically new forms. 
In all of his work there is a perceptible, definite idea, which he himself called 
the motif. Naturalistic subject-matter was sacrificed to the desire to make 
lines, perspective and space fuse in planes of color, so that all the elements 
come into equilibrium. Objects, deprived of their semblance to real things, 
were merely the means used to fuse plastic elements into new forms. 

Cézanne drew freely upon the great traditions of painting. From Velas- 
quez and Manet he learned the simplification in detail of natural objects, by 
which they are rendered in the terms of the particular qualities of objects that 
move us emotionally and that make them what they are. From Michel 
Angelo he learned to use muscular accentuations, which he treated in terms 
of color and line that form appealing designs in themselves. From El Greco 
he took over the method of distorting various parts of the human body, and 
he made the parts so distorted function more actively as components in the 
design. All of these influences are clearly perceptible in the two groups of 
nudes above referred to. His merging of these methods was extremely skill- 
ful, even in the early work in which he had not yet learned control of the 
plastic means. 

His nudes have a three-dimensional solidity and muscular design com- 
parable to the best effects of Michel Angelo, but with the greater simplification 
which came through the application of the Manet tradition, and a more original 
design achieved by means of the distortions practiced by El Greco. It is 
Cézanne’s distortions that determine his unique effects, and, as just noted, 
these distortions are perceptible in the use of all of the plastic means. For 
example, in the ‘‘Still-Life’’ (No. 94), representing a table containing fruit, 
jug, folded napkin, with a curtain hanging to the left, there is a plate of 
fruit in the middleground to the right which is placed in a position above 
and not upon the table. On the extreme edge of the table there is a pear 
which hangs partly over the edge, defying the law of gravity. Inthe extreme 
left fold of the napkin there is a peach hanging over the edge of the table 
without any support. The evidence of distortion in perspective is seen in 
the lines of the left side of the table running at an angle different from that 
of the corresponding line on the right side. 

In the ‘‘Still-Life’’ (No. 711), the front of the table at the right extends 
in a horizontal direction for a short distance and is then interrupted by an 
overhanging napkin, so that the continuity of the front line of the table is 
obscured. The horizontal line representing the continuation of the table 
is resumed very much higher up than on the right side. 

In the ‘‘Still-Life’’ (No. 23), the distortion is revealed in the excess in 
size of some of the pieces of fruit. Also, the left side of the table, extending 


490 ANA DY.S ES VO ht ate Del NiG Ss 


from the front toward the back, is represented by a line again broken in its 
continuity and thrown out of its normal position by means of the fold in the 
napkin. 

In the portrait ‘‘ Madame Cézanne’”’ (No. 710), distortions of color, line and 
space are noticeable in every part of the canvas. Color is distorted away from 
its naturalistic representation of objects or shadows. The purpose of this 
color-distortion is clearly seen by the way in which each color relates itself 
to a neighboring color to form a distinct design. 

In the portrait ‘‘Femme au Chapeau Vert” (No. 141), the details in the 
features have such individual distortions that the face is twisted and puckered 
out of all resemblance to a normal face. The hands are distorted by means 
of sudden breaks in the line, resulting in projections which look like unnatural 
excrescences. The left arm of the chair is foreshortened and made very 
much smaller than the right side of the chair, with the result that the chair 
itself is as much deformed as the woman’s face and hands. 

In the portrait of ‘‘Man Standing in Room” (No. 209) it would be impos- 
sible to say where the junction of the back wall and the floor of the room is 
located. Lines of door and wall have a degree of obliqueness that never 
would exist naturally. The man’s face is distorted both in the drawing of 
the features and ‘in the use of unnatural colors. 

In ‘‘Still-Life’’ (No. 286), the plate of fruit is above the table and appears 
suspended in air without support. The drawing of -the table is unnatural 
in every respect. The horizontal planes are so distorted from their normal 
position that one part of the table seems flat, another part hollow, and still 
other parts are raised above the level. In other words, the table is a series of 
waves, and it has the feeling of a landscape which gradually rolls from a 
flat surface towards a decided hill in the background. The oblique lines 
which represent the sides of the table and extend from the front to the back, 
differ in direction on each side, so that there is none of the normal tendency 
which lines continuing perspective have to meet in infinite distance. 

In the ‘‘Still-Life’’ (No. 190), the top of the table is hollowed. The out- 
line of the plate represents a series of waves of unequal length, making a 
plate which, naturalistically considered, is a monstrosity. The pear on this 
plate is almost as large as the plate itself. 

The object of all these distortions is perceptible in every case, that is, 
they contribute to make the design more interesting than naturalistic por- 
trayal would be. Cézanne’s purpose was to strip away the familiar appear- 
ance of things and offer an object which is interesting in itself by reason of 
the formal relations between its constituent elements; these more interesting, 
individual objects enter into formal relations with other objects and con- 
stitute plastic units entitled to consideration in their own right. In other 
words, Cézanne’s efforts were toward the achievement of a plastic form which 
is made more abstract by being stripped of its formal representative qualities. 
Cézanne proves, more than any other man, that painting is not representa- 
tion—that it is not so much the familiar aspects of objects that move us in 


CEZANNE AQ 


the real world, as the formal relations of the constituents of those objects. 
His genius consisted in resolving an object into its component planes and 
recombining them with variations of his own to achieve distinctive forms. 
As he used these distortions he created a symbolism which affords a sufficient 
clue to the identity of things to give them a known value, together with an 
added value by reason of the new forms created. All of these forms are 
legitimate plastic creations, and constitute style in its highest estate. 

Cézanne’s high place as an artist is determined more by his use of color 
than by any other factor. He had a rare feeling for color and the results 
he accomplished with it are comparable to those of any other painter. Per- 
haps more than any other artist he succeeded in rendering perspective in 
terms of color whereby deep space is made more dynamic in its potential 
uses. Color is one of the means by which all distortions are effected and 
harmoniously composed. Even when the line is grossly distorted by accentua- 
tion, the line is either color itself or is in a moving formal relation with adja- 
cent colors which makes the drawing more powerful. The distorted planes 
in his best work are rendered in terms of color, and these planes of color fuse 
into new forms which are Cézanne’s very own. His genius lay in his extraor- 
dinary ability to put these colors in equilibrium; that is, color does not appear 
as a succession of isolated spots but is something which enters into formal 
relations with all the other plastic elements, flows into all parts of the canvas, 
and organizes the painting by means of distinctive color-forms. 

This synthesis of distortions, perceptible with reference to all the plastic 
means, and so employed that the distorted planes of color interpenetrate in 
an infinite variety of ways, makes his paintings so extraordinarily dynamic 
that the feeling of abstract power in his best work is fully equal to that in 
the best work of Michel Angelo. Indeed, in this respect his achievements 
are the finer of the two because they are purely pictorial, with none of the 
admixture of sculptural motifs to be found in Michel Angelo. 

In the best work of Cézanne we feel everything in terms of a powerful wave 
of warmth and color that flows from one end of the canvas to the other in 
rhythmic units, in all possible directions, and in an infinite variety of com- 
binations. No artist has ever realized better the secret of contrasting colors 
and of establishing new relations of tones. Everything he touches he ani- 
mates. The animation and movement owe nothing to representative or 
narrative values, but are accomplished by abstract plastic forms which derive 
their great emotional power principally from color, which is structural and 
organic in the highest sense of those words. 

This feeling for design and the particular value of color is seen even in 
the earliest work done under the influence of Delacroix and Courbet. It is 
apparent in those later works which show his struggle to obtain mastery of 
the use of paint. One does not need to be familiar with the history of his 
life to see that these struggles were great, and that they lasted throughout 
his entire career. Even in his late work when he has attained complete 
mastery of his means, as always, he is untiring in his effort to use these means 
—color above all—in the creation of new and unprecedented forms. 


492 ACNUA LAY<S oo re 0 eahh eNat le Nt 


Mount Saint Victoire (No. 13). The first effect is that of a rhythm which 
carries the eye from one end of the canvas to the other: the rhythms flow in- 
all directions. In the background the rhythm is made up of a series of moun- 
tains of different heights, the general shape of which approaches the round. 
In the middle distance is a rhythm of masses made up of small houses, slight 
hills or variations in degrees of flatness of the ground. In the foreground 
there is a rhythm of bushes and just back of that a rhythm of trees. None 
of these rhythms is monotonous; for instance, in the background there is 
variation in the sizes and shapes of the hills and in different parts of the hills. 
In the foreground there is variation in the size of the bushes, their outlines, 
their position in different planes. At times the rhythm becomes almost a 
mighty roll, as in the mountains. It is a slighter roll in the foreground and 
a larger roll in the trees and two houses just back of the foreground. There 
is a variation in these rhythms in other respects than in their sizes. For 
instance, to the right of the canvas from the middleground to the beginning 
of the hills on the right side of the canvas, there is a flat area in which the 
rhythm is not in the size of the objects but in the color and light. In the 
left middleground, where there are few or no trees, slight elevations in the 
ground make another series of rhythms produced by lines and colors. These 
rhythms hold the attention by their variety in size of objects, lines, colors, 
masses, and they are increased by their very variety. For example, in the 
foreground there begins a series of slight rhythms of the bushes, which imme- 
diately becomes very much larger in volume in the trees in the middleground, 
and drops to a flat surface, which is a rhythm of small houses, color, lines, etc. 
It then starts in a larger volume by the foot-hills of the mountains, then in a 
still larger volume by mountains of another degree of height, and attains a 
climax in the mountain peak. The transition from the foot-hills to the peak 
is another series of rhythms of color, line, variations in height of land, etc. 
It is like a Bach fugue, but is even more varied. 

This rhythm is accomplished by all the known plastic means—line, light, 
color, space, mass, perspective. Some of the rhythms and color-forms are 
effected by contrasting colors, some by sharp contrasts, but usually the 
means is a graduation in the degree of light. The masses are made rhythmic 
by their variation in size, line and color, rather than by any bilateral dupli- 
cation around a central mass. The space is rhythmic by virtue of the differ- 
ence in size of the intervals between the various objects. The drawing is made 
rhythmic by being broken up into all possible degrees of straight, horizontal, 
vertical, oblique and curvilinear lines. The perspective is so merged with color 
that it cannot be separated from it: that is, color gives the perspective its com- 
pelling charm; and that perspective is a series of rhythmic dispositions of 
space between objects. With all this active functioning of space and per- 
spective we are conscious of no accentuation of either. We feel the distance 
as well as the spaciousness that gives the grandeur to nature. 

Composition: There is some tendency in the general composition toward 
a bilateral symmetrical distribution around central masses. For instance, in 


CEZANNE 493 


the middleground the clump of trees and the two houses function as a central 
mass, with the bilaterally balanced masses consisting, on the right side, of a 
comparatively flat piece of land, and on the left side, of slightly elevated 
land. When the attention is fixed upon that symmetrical design, the eye 
is gradually carried from the middleground up to the peak of the mountain 
which is approximately the centre of the canvas. This high peak is balanced 
on the right side by a decidedly lower mountain with graceful, flowing, curv- 
ing line, and on the left side by a line which slopes gradually from the peak 
of the mountain down almost to the middleground. Between the central 
mass in the middleground and the apex of the mountain, there is always a 
focal point which arrests the attention and a corresponding element to the 
right and to the left to effect symmetrical balance. But in no case is there 
an exact duplication of elements on the sides: each unit is so varied from 
the corresponding elements on the opposite side that we get a picturesque 
variety. The essential feature of the canvas is a rhythm consisting of color, 
line, mass, space. In it there is great variety in the use of every one of the 
plastic means. 

The modelling of trees, houses and other objects is done by his usual 
modulation of tone used in conjunction with light; the result in each case is 
a fine three-dimensional solidity, which never stands out as an accentuation 
but is felt as a reality. 

This picture proves that Cézanne was an impressionist in the sense of 
using light as one of the chief motives and as a unifying factor in the canvas. 
The design made by the light is very complicated, infinitely varied, and 
harmoniously related to the other units. The shadows are rich in color- 
quality, never dull or drab. All parts of the canvas are bathed in light and 
the design of that light is a strong reinforcement of the color-forms which 
unify the canvas. Wherever the eye rests, the canvas is of compelling interest 
because of the fusion of the plastic means. ‘That is, if any part of the canvas 
were cut out it would be in itself a plastic unity. 

His palette in this canvas is really limited yet the effect is one of an infinite 
variety of colors. The actual colors are red, yellow, green, but these are 
used in conjunction with light so that there are many variations of tone. 
The color is rich, deep, penetrating, all-pervading. The painting is color- 
composition of the highest grade. 

Portrait of Madame Cézanne (No. 710). Characteristic Cézanne form 
with his distortions in the face and hands; of general dark color which stands 
out well from a gray background which is almost a gray monochrome on one 
side and mottled gray deeply tinged with light on the other. Symmetrical 
composition in that the central mass is duplicated on each side. This duplica- 
tion departs from exactness of units by virtue of different color-qualities in each 
side of the background; the head is at a slight angle, so that each half of the 
head as a mass is not exactly alike; the hair is slightly less in volume on one 
side; one eye is slightly lower than the other; the right ear is visible and the 
left is not; there is more reddish color in the right side of the face than on 


494 ANALYSES) Oi EP ARINe TaliN GS 


the left; the mouth is so distorted that more of it is on one side than the 
other; the left shoulder is defined by a line which is broken into short curves, 
so that the shoulder is a series of wavy swellings, while the right shoulder is 
practically a straight line with only one variation toward a definite projecting 
curve; the hands are crossed but the right hand extends much further toward 
the opposite side of the picture than the other hand; the shawl projects more 
on one side than on the other at the level of the hands, and the lines of each 
side of the shawl are broken up, but quite differently. The floor back of the 
woman is visible more on one side than the other and is of a different shape, 
as well as decidedly modified in color; the result is a different color-form on 
the two sides of the floor. All the above variations illustrate Santayana’s 
account of the picturesque; the eye demands a balance of symmetrical units 
on each side of a centre, but that balance is increased in picturesqueness by 
departure from exact duplication. 

Feeling for space is good: the figure is felt as in a room and with space back 
of it. No tendency to infinity of space as in many of the best portraits. 
The variations in color of the left and right side of the. background merge 
into a harmonious whole. 

Drawing: Contours are defined by a line which, while sharp, is not 
incisive. The line never extends very far in one direction but is broken up 
either by changes in direction or modifications of color, so that it is always 
interesting. No tendency for color in the line to overflow the contours 
as in Renoir; that is, line makes a sharp differentiation between the object 
depicted and the surrounding features. Line is very often ragged in spots 
although the continuity of the line is intended to define contours. 

Color: Departure from naturalistic color of flesh toward a greenish, 
ghastly cast, tinged with spots of subtle red. Colors in the face are not 
solid areas, but are modulated with tones ranging from blue through many 
variations of tone to a bluish-green. The red on the cheeks has no tendency 
to be sharply confined to the cheeks, but extends on one side in an irregular 
streak from just under the eye down to below the mouth, and is limited to 
a narrow area not more than a half inch in width. On the left side of the 
face the red is placed in contrast with an irregular streak of light bluish-green 
slightly modulated with white. On the opposite side of the face the red is 
contrasted with a streak of decidedly darker color, also mottled with light, 
which forms a shadow. The nose is light bluish-green at the top, with a 
streak of red on one side, and a dense shadow of mottled blue extending the 
whole of the opposite side. The end of the nose is bluish-green, modified 
with a subtle red very sparsely used. The line defining the contour of both 
lips is made imperceptible in parts by an irregular streak of bluish-green 
applied in the form of a triangle at the left side; this is obviously a shadow, 
but its effect is to accentuate the distortion. Underneath the nose, a deep 
shadow of dark blue makes a triangle coming down to join the triangle of 
lighter bluish-green just mentioned. This latter shadow accentuates the 
deformation, and enters into a color-design with the first triangle around 


CEZANNE 495 


the mouth. The forehead is a mixture of brown, blue and subtle red, all 
modulated with white to make a design. The composite effect of the color 
in the face is a definite design, which is bizarre in itself and which tends to 
accentuate the general deformation of the face. 

The color scheme of the face is duplicated in the hands so that we get the 
same effects as noted in the face, including bizarre color-designs. Colors in 
face and hands enter into fine harmonious relations with each other. 

The painting of the crossed hands is very broad. In one hand the thumb 
and one finger are separable into units, but the other fingers are merged into 
an almost solid mass. On one side of the picture the canvas is left bare in 
the region of one of the fingers, so that the color of the bare canvas functions 
in the color-design. The effect of the hands and face, when looked at at a 
distance, is of overwhelming solidity and reality. We feel them as creations 
rather than natural flesh, but there is a grasp of the essential reality of flesh. 

The color in the shawl, while of general uniform appearance, is a mixture 
of various tones extending from very dark blue to a light blue with a green- 
ish tinge. This gives the effect of the texture of a real object, but in terms 
of a color-design which functions as a plastic unity rather than as a literal 
duplication of textile. The slightly perceptible skirt forms a symmetrical 
design, in which the centre note is of a richer and deeper color than its bilateral 
duplications, which are of the same general tone though less bright and less 
rich. The dominant color here is a brownish-yellow mottled with subtle 
blues and slight suggestions of green. The skirt makes another design of lines 
and colors; the lines differentiating the skirt from shawl and background are 
irregular and ragged, but essentially continuous in each case. In all the areas 
thus far discussed there is an infinite variety of pleasing patterns made up 
of interrelated lines and colors. 

Modelling: Every object in the picture has a subtle but convincing three- 
dimensional solidity. The modelling is done by two distinctly perceptible 
but codperatively working elements—color and light. The color is not solid 
and uniform as in the old masters, but is modulated; that is, put on in small 
areas with constant variations of the tones by means of light. The light is 
not felt as the means of modelling, as in Leonardo, but is so actively in com- 
bination with the color that the color and light jointly accomplish the model- 
ling. This method of modelling is forecasted in the best work of Tintoretto 
and is taken over by El Greco, but it differs from that method in that the 
light is less pronounced in Cézanne’s modelling; in addition, color functions 
more, and more subtly, than in either of the above painters. This modelling 
is clearly a result of impressionism, both in the manner of using the light 
and in the division of the color into contrasting tones that give at a dis- 
tance the effect of uniformity. By Cézanne’s method the result is a more 
moving solidity than anything done by the impressionists. The distortions 
are Cézanne’s own modification and adaptation of those which had their 
origin in Tintoretto and became one of the principal means by which El Greco 
obtained his particular effects. 


496 ANALY SES OF) GRAN WaliNas > 


Light: A definite design is made by the light. Starting at the extreme 
upper left corner of the canvas, there is an irregular rectangular spot of light 
which increases gradually in intensity from the corner until it becomes almost 
a spot-light of illumination at the back of the head; it is very much dimin- 
ished by the dark brown of the hair (which in itself is interspersed with light), 
extends down over the face, appears in various isolated places in the shawl, 
becomes larger in size again by its distribution over almost the entire area 
of both hands, and continues down the central part of the gown. On each 
side of the shawl, on the background, and on the floor, are other spots of 
light which enter into this design; even in the upper right part of the back- 
ground, the monotone is relieved by subtle modulations of light. The result 
is a bizarre design of light which includes every part of the canvas. 

Summary: No element in the picture is overaccentuated. The drawing 
is original, and is done with line and color fused; in some cases, notably 
in distortions, the drawing is accomplished by blunt isolated spots of color. 
Color is rich and deep, is structurally used and functions everywhere in com- 
posing the picture. The masses are of three-dimensional solidity, but we do 
not feel the solidity in isolation from the other factors. Modelling is done 
with line, light and color, welded into a new form of unity. It is different 
from that of any other painter, even those who influenced him, Tintoretto and 
El Greco. The painting gives a plastic form which is so real and convincing 
that we feel it is a distinct entity, and are not conscious of the distortions. 
The human figure is only an excuse for the creation of a plastic form, but it 
has sufficient anchors in representative quality to tie the picture to this 
world. Plastic form is thus made the means of increasing human values. 
For instance, no human hands ever looked like those hands; yet we feel that 
they are solid and real, and they get those qualities from the plastic means 
used in such conjunction that a design of intensely moving power is achieved. 

Still-Life (No. 711). The first effect is of a rich, colorful design. The 
composition is extraordinarily compact, well knit together, not overcrowded. 
It organizes in bilateral units by means of the basket, one corner of which is 
placed in the middle of the canvas near the background and extends back- 
wards with diagonal lines towards the left and the right. This in itself is an 
unusual compositional feature. From that angle of the basket which forms 
the central focal organizing point, bilaterally balanced compositional units 
may be found in practically all parts of the canvas, but nowhere is there 
exact duplication; indeed so far is the departure from duplication that when 
the balancing elements are looked at not as masses but in terms of their 
constituents, we find a radical difference. For instance, filling of the space 
to right and left of the table is dissimilar. Where the table stops on the 
right side, the space is occupied by a napkin which drops from the edge of 
the table, occupies the right corner of the table, and continues it out as a 
mass. When we look for a duplicating unit on the left to correspond, we 
find another napkin extending from the end of the table, but not so far to 
the left as the napkin to the right. Between the extreme right of the canvas 


CEZANNE 407 


and the first napkin there is a triangular space filled with rich color, with a 
corresponding triangular space, but of different shape and size, on the left 
side. The units on the table to the right and left of the central point of the 
corner of the basket are very unequally distributed if one considers them with 
regard to number of objects, but they are very beautifully balanced if one 
considers them as groups. For instance, on the right side is a plate con- 
taining seven peaches and pears; on the left side is a napkin whichfunctions asa 
unit duplicating the plate; upon this napkin there are only four very irregu- 
larly distributed peaches and pears. The group of seven pieces of fruit on 
the plate finds its balancing element on the left side by the folds in the napkin. 
These folds make a design, just as the seven pieces of fruit on the plate make 
a design, and each of these designs is totally different. However, we feel 
the union between the two units of plate and napkin with their respective 
contained objects. 

Further instances of symmetry increased in value by variety are 
found in those parts of the canvas immediately adjacent to the extreme 
right and left edges. In each case, at the top there is a straight line which 
seems to stop in the background, but is carried by the napkin on the right 
side and by the lines of the objects on the table at the left side all the way 
down to the bottom of the canvas and to the extreme foreground; in other 
words, there is a narrow rectangular mass on each side, and these masses 
are varied in color, in their constituent objects, and even in their shape, by 
the various objects to the extreme right and extreme left of the canvas, includ- 
ing the obvious decoration of the wall which differs on the right side from 
that on the left side. This duplication of units gives a rhythm which pervades 
the whole canvas. 

Drawing: The line in general is sharp and defines all contours, but is 
rarely incisive. It varies from extreme sharpness to broad raggedness. The 
line is so fused with color that both color and line function in defining con- 
tours. In depicting an object, one part will be rendered by a sharp line 
which becomes ragged in another part of the object; this variation in the 
quality of the line is seen to be deliberate, for the enrichment of design. 

Modelling: Were we find in exaggerated form Cézanne’s characteristic 
method of modelling by juxtaposed contrasting colors modulated with light. 
The color has spots of light to accentuate the part nearest the eye, but there 
is always, very close to the light, a spot of bright rich color, and in conse- 
quence we feel the modelling as light and color rather than merely as light. 
In some places color overflows the line as it does constantly in Renoir, but 
there is always sufficient line or changing color to differentiate the object 
from its background. In this picture Cézanne reaches the height of his use 
of color, both in variety and richness. Practically all the colors of the spec- 
trum are here; they are all deep and penetrate into the object. In the case 
of the middle peach on the plate, two leaves extend in the form of a band 
over the peach and make a design like a striped, rich, red textile. Perspec- 
tive is distorted and so rendered in terms of color that we feel it not primarily 


498 ANALY SESU OR ERAN T-LN Go 


as distance, but as a rich design. The canvas is of extraordinary brightness, 
not only by reason of the bright colors, but because of the light, which touches 
spots in every part of the canvas and makes a design which has in itself a 
strong appeal. 

Space composition is beautifully realized in the well-defined intervals 
between the objects, and while we recognize the spaciousness of the whole 
picture, we feel it as an integral part of the plastic form. 

This picture also exemplifies well the tendency which the impressionists 
adopted as part of their technique to abolish perspective as a rendering of 
distance, and to replace it by an arrangement of objects almost perpendicular, 
which gives the effect of a screen. This has been commented upon in the 
work of Fra Filippo Lippi, the Persians, Matisse and other painters. 

Summary: Every area of this picture is rich and glowing in color. All 
the plastic elements, line, space, color, mass, perspective, are used in Cézanne’s 
quite individual way and in balanced measure. The picture is composed by 
means of color into a design which arrests the attention at first glance and 
holds our interest after analysis. 


VAN GOGH’S TECHNIQUE* 


In ‘‘Landscape’’ (No. 136), representing a group of houses placed diagon- 
ally in the middleground, the color-spots in the foreground and in the sky 
are very similar to those of Pissarro and Monet. There is a series of deep, 
brilliant greens, yellows, reds, blues and ivories that form in general the 
color-composition of the foreground and middleground. These are thrown 
into relief by a background, the general tendency of which is towards a rose- 
pink, and which is done in the impressionistic manner, made especially ani- 
mated by the decided circular swirl. The gables and the outlines of the 
roofs are rendered in wavy, oblique lines, repeated with less exaggeration in 
the other parts of the houses, and continued in the bushes in front of the 
houses where the line wavers horizontally. The result is a contrast between 
the lines of the houses and the lines of the bushes. 

In the ‘‘Postman”’ (No. 37), the color-spots are longer and are applied in his 
characteristic manner of narrow, long, ribbon-like brush-strokes. These are 
used even in the modelling of the face, in a manner similar to that employed 
by Renoir in the late seventies. The figure is a series of brilliant reds, yellows, 
greens and blues, making in themselves an interesting color-form. The back- 
ground consists of a wall of pink flowers done with the impressionistic brush- 
work on a background of green, almost monochrome but varied somewhat 
by the use of light. The distortions in the features are somewhat in evidence, 
with the effect of distortion increased by use of obviously unnatural color- 


* The paintings upon which this study is based are in the collection of the 
Barnes Foundation. 


BONNARD 499 


effects: the mustache and a good part of the beard are rendered in a pea- 
green color, shading off in some places to a yellowish-green. Here again the 
key-note of the design is contrast. 

In the ‘‘Smoker”’ (No. 119), the color is applied broadly, more in the 
manner of Manet, with a tendency in the face toward the characteristic 
brush-work of Hals, except that bright color is applied instead of Hals’s paste- . 
like tones. The figure is done in reds and yellows, with tendency toward 
greenish-brown, while the background is two shades of light blue, varied at 
one side by a curtain which has red streaks at the top and is violet for the 
rest of the distance, extending almost to the bottom of the canvas. The dis- 
tortions are made more apparent by the broad brush-strokes which make the 
eyes cavernous, and similar distortions about the nose accentuate the contrast 
between the nose and the eyes. Here also the face is rendered in a non- 
naturalistic color, which accentuates the effect of distortion and contrast. 

In the ‘‘Reclining Nude”’ (No. 720), the foreground is a yellow, red and 
ivory, and the background a blue varied with a slight amount of brownish- 
red and white. But the contrast between the foreground, middleground, 
and background is less striking because of the use of less brilliant colors and 
because the whole painting, including the nude, is done with the characteristic 
narrow, long, ribbon-like spots of contrasting color. 

In the ‘‘Landscape”’ (No. 303), representing a factory, there is distortion 
in every object depicted. The smoke stacks are done in a long wavy line 
and are never entirely vertical. The road in the foreground is painted with 
oblique, broad ribbon-like strokes of contrasting yellows, browns and greens, 
One of the factory buildings is painted with vertical, ribbon-like strokes of 
color, and the other buildings are painted with smaller brush-strokes which 
run horizontally. A group of small objects at the right, indistinguishable 
in their identity, are done with a curvilinear brush-stroke which gives the 
effect of a swirl. The sky is painted in a series of small color-spots resembling 
very much the pointillist method of Seurat. The color application varies 
from long, ribbon-like streaks to oval spots in the sky, thus making a series 
of lines which contrast in color, in size, and in area, and produce a design which 
is quite moving. 


BONNARD 


Lamp-lighted Interior (B. F.) (No. 275). The picture owes its value to the 
successful use of color, which organizes compactly the various structural and 
decorative elements. The yellow shade of the lighted lamp in the centre 
of the composition is balanced by lamps of the same general shape and color 
on each side, with the reflection of these yellows in the window and mirror. 
This yellow note has an appealing formal relation to the design made up 
by the red dresses in three of the four figures represented; this in turn relates 
itself to the design made by the three red areas of the curtains. Between 


500 AINA LYS E50 Fi PAGeN DilNiGes 


those three separate color-forms there is a subsidiary design made up of 
another yellow color-form, consisting of the dress of one of the figures, the 
top of the table, and the cushion on the window-seat. This yellow is repeated 
in another color-form made up of the two areas of the walls, in which the 
general color is yellow, but is modified by streaks of green. Still another 
color-form is that of the roughly reproduced textile effect in the bottom part 
of the table, back of the window-seat, and in two areas to the right and left 
of the canvas, as well as in several streaks in the wall. It is the relation 
of these color-forms to each other and to the linear patterns made up of the 
contours of various objects that give the painting its high plastic value. Here 
color functions everywhere and knits the whole composition together. 


GLACKENS* 


For five years Cézanne’s ‘‘Femme au Chapeau Vert’’ has been hanging 
on a wall, flanked on one side by Glackens’s ‘‘ Portrait of Himself,’ and on the 
other by Goya’s ‘‘Portrait of Dr. Galos.’’ Nothing could be more diverse 
than the kinds of painting represented, but there has been a perfect harmony 
between the three. The first feeling in looking at the wall was that of the 
rugged strength of each painting, with each ruggedness of a different kind. 
The portrait of Glackens is reminiscent of nobody’s painting but his own. 
The figure, in a coat the general color of which is tan, is placed against a 
background of dark mottled red and brown, animated by spots of color put on 
with visible brush strokes. The design of the picture consists in the rela- 
tions between that figure and that background, which are unified into a whole 
that is animated and sparkling everywhere. There is a convincing three- 
dimensional solidity in which light, line and color are merged into an appeal- 
ing design. The application of paint is broad, loose and fluent, and the 
color, which is alive at every point, brings the whole picture together into a 
convincing and solid ensemble. 

Painting No. 301, representing a group of bathers on a float, with diving 
boards, scintillates like a cluster of jewels. The composition is made up of 
a group of masses—float, boats, wharf, house in the distance—that follow 
each other in a rhythmic sequence with harmonious spatial intervals between 
them. There is no central mass, the painting organizing about the largest 
mass, the float, which is almost at the extreme left of the canvas. Every 
mass in the painting enters into balanced relations with the largest mass, 
so that any object in the canvas may be selected as a point of departure for 
rhythms which flow from one object to the other with extraordinary grace. 
The surface of the water and sky is in itself a fine composition of relations in 
an area of different shades of blue, modulated with light, which vary from 
small spots on the water to large areas in the sky. The color is as rhythmic 
as the compositional units and spatial intervals, and it has a vividness, a 


* All of the paintings by Glackens here analyzed are in the collection of the 
Barnes Foundation. 


GLACKENS 501 


depth, a glow which amounts to an iridescence. The drawing of the figures 
is stripped to the point of extreme simplicity by the absence of detail and 
yet nothing could be more real than those figures. The narrative of the 
bathing hour is merely an excuse for the organization of line, space, color 
and mass into an ensemble firmly knit together by rich, juicy, glowing, fluid 
color. This painting is proof of Glackens’s ability to take the color-forms 
of Renoir and use them as a starting point for the creation of a form which 
has nothing in common with Renoir’s except the quality and organizing 
power of color. 

The ‘‘ Race Track’’ (No. 138) is as perfect an example of a sun-lighted area 
as exists in the work of any of the great impressionists. We feel the sunlight 
in the same way that we feel it on a hot summer day, that is, as a background 
to whatever is taking place, and something that would impress us with its 
identity if we selected it for observation. The colors are glaring in both 
their quality and their infusion with light; but there is no garishness or strid- 
ency. None of the objects are naturalistically rendered. No grass was ever 
as green as that grass-plot, no clay was ever as reddish-yellow, no sky was 
ever of that quality of blue, no roofs were ever as iridescent as these. The 
colors are more reminiscent of Matisse than they are of any of the impres- 
sionists, yet their quality, manner of combination, and contrasts are radically 
different from those of Matisse. Here Glackens uses color creatively with 
wonderful results. It has an individual sensuous quality, and is the means 
of organizing the canvas into a color-form totally different from that to be 
found in any other painter. His drawing is broad and loose and is made up 
of a successful merging of line, light and color that portrays the essential 
quality of objects at rest and in movement. The painting conveys the very 
spirit of a race track on a summer day, with all the background of myriads of 
subtle feelings that charge the event with its intrinsic quality. 

In his painting No. 306, representing a girl sitting on the end of a sofa, 
Glackens has achieved the effects of Degas’s line, Manet’s method of apply- 
ing paint, Renoir’s feeling for femininity, in a form which he makes his own. 
It has, in solution, the feeling of all the above-mentioned artists. It is genre- 
painting raised to a high degree of aesthetic value and made more appealing 
and distinctive by reduction of the objects to bare essentials. 

Painting No. 267: a bunch of gladioli, zinnias, chrysanthemums, and 
asters are in a jar which is blue at the top and moulded into an iridescent 
admixture of yellow, blue and white. This jar and flowers are placed upon 
a background of pinks and reds tinged with yellow and richly lighted. The 
rendering of the color-values, which make the definition between the flowers, 
jar and background, is so subtle that it is impossible to say how it is accom- 
plished. The whole painting is of a floating, delicate lightness that can be 
compared only toa rich foam. Here also Glackens has taken Renoir’s color- 
forms and rendered them in his own terms, so that something new emerges, 
reminiscent of Renoir only in the quality of color and its activity in knitting 
together the whole painting. 


35 


502 A NADY S'B Ss Oe a TaN ING 


Painting No. 160 shows Glackens’s ability to achieve compositional and 
color-effects comparable to the best of Matisse. The painting represents 
a girl in a bright mottled gown, placed against a background of contrast- 
ing colors consisting of a general bluish-green in the middle, yellow draped 
curtains to the right and left, and to the extreme left a strip of pinkish- 
violet. To the left also is a table on which is a green jar containing red, 
yellow, pink and white tulips. The canvas owes its power to a contrast of 
broad areas of color, all the units of which are diversified by subtle gradations, 
of varying degrees of brilliance. The design, which is highly moving by 
reason of its unusual manner of construction, represents one of the great 
achievements of contemporary painting in the creation of an effective design. 


MAURICE PRENDERGAST 


Landscape (B.F.) (No. 216) represents the height of his powers in achiev- 
ing a design by means of his own technique. Individual spots of light and 
color, as such, exist only in very few places, where they function as linear and 
color-elements that enter into harmonious relation with various objects and 
produce strongly moving rhythms of color and line. For instance, in the water 
in the foreground a few small spots of color and light are perceptible close 
to objects such as boats and figures, some of which are rendered in long hori- 
zontal masses and others in vertical masses of comparatively solid color. In 
the middleground the banks are represented by contrasting broad horizontal 
masses of color which undulate from the extreme right of the canvas to beyond 
the centre and become short, wavy strokes of darker color at the extreme left. 
These masses of color, tending in a general horizontal direction, are relieved 
by frequent vertical masses, such as figures, houses, trees; those figures and 
houses function as units contrasting in color and direction with the general 
horizontal tendency of the design. As a result the whole canvas is a suc- 
cession of contrasts of line, color, mass and spatial relations, that give rise to 
a series of rhythms comparable to those of a Bach fugue. For instance, the 
horizontal, lilac-pink river bank in the middleground serves as a starting 
point for one of the fugues; it first changes its direction to the slightly oblique, 
then changes in color by interspersions of green which makes a new unit in 
the fugue; that in turn is modified by line and color interspersions up to a 
house with white walls and red roof; each element in the house with its sur- 
rounding objects is so varied that its details take on the character of a suc- 
cession of individual rhythms which maintain the same general fugue char- 
acter. The lilac-pink of the river bank in its entire length may be considered 
as one of the main themes of the fugue, and this is duplicated with minor 
variations in a mass of clouds which extends all the way across the top of 
the canvas; between these two factors the same motif is repeated in general 
direction, but is so varied in color and line that it merges as a whole into a 


LUKS 5°93 


general fugue form. In every part there are an infinite number of minor 
variations of color, line, mass, space and general treatment, which correspond 
to the internal variations of contrapuntal music. 


EAKINS 


Dr. Agnew (B.F.) (No. 341). This three-quarter length figure is a study 
made for the composition showing Dr. Agnew in his surgical clinic and sur- 
rounded by a group of assistants and nurses. This single figure is a positive 
creation plastically, done in a manner reminiscent chiefly of Velasquez, but 
with the influence of the Hals and Manet traditions clearly in evidence. The 
modelling has a convincing three-dimensional solidity, the drawing is sure, 
firm and highly expressive, there is delicate space-composition of a high order. 
The posture of the figure is graceful, fluid and light, and is strongly sugges- 
tive, both in manner of execution and the total general effect, of the poised 
movement which Velasquez rendered with such reality. The color is limited 
practically to several shades of brown; this, together with white, is used with 
such subtle distinctions and values that the figure stands out from the back- 
ground, and both the background and the figure merge into a unified whole. 
The painting achieves a dignity, majesty and reality that succeed in carry- 
ing the obvious, strong character of the subject. Eakins rarely rose to the 
heights represented by this picture. His drawing is usually tight, and his 
general handling of the plastic elements tends towards the production of a 
skillful but essentially academic painting. 


LUKS 


The Blue Churn (B.F.) (No. 391). This is an interior representing a seated 
woman churning, surrounded by two geese, two buckets and various vaguely 
indicated objects in the background. The general feeling is that of the best 
of the genre-painters who used an adaptation of Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro. 
In this painting, chiaroscuro has been so successfully adapted that the essen- 
tially sombre character of the colors is illuminated by the use of rich, juicy 
tones in the face, gown, churn and objects in the foreground. The basic 
effect of Rembrandt, the placing of a figure similar in color values to its 
background, is here realized very successfully, and with quite personal dis- 
tinction. In spite of its dark character, everything in the painting glows, 
even the dark background. The drawing is loose and vigorous and is done 
with paint in a manner which is a combination of the Dutch tradition with 
Manet’s broad brush-strokes. This drawing, the method of application of 
paint, and the rich, juicy quality of the color, give an effective simplicity with 
comparatively little attention to the duplication of naturalistic details. At 
a distance all of the features in the face and other parts of the body, as well 


504 ANA LAY SES VO Tee eOleN “ColNiGes 


as the parts of the geese and the pails, are sufficiently representative of what 
they are; but the drawing and manner of the application of paint give a 
simplicity and a reality more convincing than the detailed painting of most 
of the Dutch genre-painters. The composition tends toward the common- 
place scheme of central mass with duplicating units to right and left, but the 
conventionality of the composition is leavened by a note of novelty and inter- 
est in the disposition of the various areas of light and color. In all parts of 
the canvas the spatial intervals between the objects are clearly felt and give 
a form of space-composition which contributes to the aesthetic effect of the 
ensemble. 


MATISSE* 


In the ‘‘Still-Life’’ (No. 133) Matisse’s distinctive color, applied in small 
spots, lends a rugged and original solidity to the jar and organizes the painting 
by means of varied and contrasting colors. Another small painting (No. 35), 
of a somewhat later period, consists of a juxtaposition of small areas of 
different bright colors, varied in size, shape and direction, and placed appar- 
ently at random in different parts of the picture. There is.such a total 
departure from naturalism that it is impossible to say what the subject- 
matter is. It is probably intended as a landscape but we feel it as a rhythmic 
use of different bright colors that unify into an organic plastic form. In 
painting No. 84 there is just sufficient continuity of line to enable the specta- 
tor to recognize that it is the figure of a woman in a brightly colored gown. 
Here, too, the interest is in design, of which color is the organizing component. 
In the background there is evidence of literal perspective, but the colors are 
so skillfully used that the background may be looked upon either as a flat 
screen, or as a rendering of infinite distance. The whole canvas moves 
rhythmically in terms of color, reinforced by wavy lines of different shapes, 
sizes and directions. The design of this picture is reminiscent of that of the 
Japanese, but is more moving because of the better color and less obvious 
use of plastic means. 

The first early important influence upon Matisse, that of Cézanne, is seen 
in the ‘‘Landscape’”’ (No. 73). With a tree in foreground, clump of objects 
in middleground, sea and sky in background, Matisse has taken over a familiar 
composition of Cézanne, but he has so simplified the use of the plastic means 
that the painting has a form which is definitely Matisse’s. The brilliant 
colors are used broadly to depict objects, and with so little attention to out- 
lines that they function as spots of color; the details, except for the rendering 
of the roofs by broad areas of color, are not perceptible. The effect obtained 
is a rhythmic moving of voluminal masses in deep space, such as is achieved 
by Cézanne; but here Matisse depends more upon color, while Cézanne rein- 


* All the paintings upon which this discussion is based are in the collection of 
the Barnes Foundation. 


MATISSE 505 


forced color by more definitely modelling and outlining objects. The result 
is less solidity in the objects, but the color makes the solidity sufficient for 
the design. Here, as in all of Matisse’s important work, the effect is obtained 
by the rhythmic use of contrasting colors, employed with such variation in 
size, shape and direction that there is great variety in the rhythmic units. 
These rhythms themselves effect a contrast by reason of their size and disposi- 
tion in the various parts of the canvas. The composite effect of the picture is 
a rhythmic flow of color in all directions; as a result, a new and distinctively 
Matisse form is realized. 

In the ‘‘Still-Life’”’ (No. 64), the influence of Cézanne is very apparent both 
in the subject-matter and in the attempt to establish the dynamic relations 
between objects by means of their spatial relations. Matisse has taken over 
Cézanne’s method of defining the contour of objects by a heavy, ragged line, 
and of placing colors on each side of that outline to make the color func- 
tion strongly in the drawing. Distortions are apparent in all the plastic 
elements employed—space, line, color, shape of objects. Totally different 
colors and treatment take away any close resemblance to Cézanne. All the 
colors are vivid and brilliant. They vary from Cézanne’s in their applica- 
tion in broad areas, strikingly differentiated in quality, and in the construc- 
tion of individual objects which show little suggestion of modelling. Line, 
light and color are used to realize a considerable three-dimensional solidity 
in the melon, and, to a less extent, in the lemon and the jar. 

Originality and power of design are achieved by individual rendering 
of the objects on the table, by the contrast of the table as a unit with the 
background made up of strong contrasting colors rendered more interesting 
by variation in their tones by light, by obvious brush-strokes, and by lines 
defining the different parts of the background. The masses move rhythmi- 
cally by reason of their size and disposition in space, and because the color- 
designs in each of the objects increase their animation. When abstracted 
from its function as representing the surfaces of objects, the color moves 
rhythmically all over the canvas and creates a distinctive Matisse color-design. 

In the large painting ‘“‘Joie de Vivre” (No. 719), brilliant color, quite 
original in its quality, is used as a means of achieving a design of great aesthetic 
power. The color rhythms here assume a larger volume and add increased 
power to the design by the very size of those rhythms, as well as by their 
operation at the right and left as balancing compositional elements around 
other rhythmic lines and colors, which function as more or less centrally placed 
masses. For example, one may select as a central mass either the reclining 
nude in the immediate centre of the foreground, or the nude immediately 
above it, or the ring of dancing nudes just above the second nude, and in 
each case the eye finds a balanced satisfaction to the right and left by virtue 
of the large color-areas mentioned. This balance of rhythms gets an added 
force from corresponding compositional units on each side varying in size, 
shape and direction. In other words, the central objects function not only 


506 ANALYSES OFe PAT NTT NGS 


as masses but as color-rhythms. These are reinforced by irregular, wavy 
and ragged lines defining the outlines of all objects and color-masses. The 
rhythms flow in many different directions. For instance, if the horizontal 
rhythms are selected as points of departure, the foreground, made up of a 
group of pink nudes reclining on a strip of blue ground, enters into formal 
relations with the strip of yellow immediately above it; that in turn makes 
a rhythm with the two reclining nudes immediately above; then further 
above comes the ring of dancing nudes placed upon a large areas of yellow 
interspersed with green; immediately above that unit is a broad horizontal 
band, made up of blue at one end, which disappears in the centre of the general 
pink of the background, and then emerges at the right as a band of the same 
width, but made up of pink, violet and red. 

The units in every part of the canvas are made up of these contrasting 
colors arranged rhythmically, and these units may be considered as either 
the individual figures, or the figure in relation to its color or adjacent object. 
But whatever unit is selected this rhythm of color is found. The composite 
effect of the canvas is a series of rhythms which flow in and about ail parts 
of the canvas; these rhythms are essentially color, and when lines are employed 
they assume the character of color as well as line. All the colors are brilliant; 
their tendency toward garishness and stridency disappears entirely in the 
effect which they obtain by being related to each other, that is, made elements 
in the total color-composition. The principal influences here are Persian 
and Hindu, but Matisse distorted them in all their aspects—drawing of figures, 
placing of masses in composition, and especially accentuation of the indi- 
vidual features of the body. While this painting is essentially flat and is 
highly decorative, it is not mere decoration because the structural elements 
of plastic form are all present in sufficient degree. The modelling of the 
bodies, while slight, is clearly apparent. The colors used in very broad 
areas at the right and left of the canvas are modulated with light so that 
they are not merely flat masses of color, but function as voluminal masses 
moving in deep space. This deep space is not accentuated, but there are 
intervals between all the objects and masses of color which give space-com- 
position in a degree sufficient to harmonize with the general flat nature of 
the canvas. In short, this picture owes its aesthetic power to rhythmic 
movement that embraces all the plastic elements, is infinitely varied, and 
functions in all parts of the canvas. The primary aesthetic value of the 
picture is due to the great number of formal relations established between 
all the plastic elements—line, space, color, mass; these formal relations always 
have a tendency toward rhythm, varying from mere repetition of a unit to 
the obvious and more complicated rhythms formed by the movement of 
broad masses of color in space. 

“‘La Legon de Musique”’ (No 717), painted about 1921, represents the con- 
summation of Matisse’s powers up to that date. The picture represents a 
section of a room with a vista through a balcony window into a garden. 


MATISSE 5°07 


The colors are less exotic than they are sometimes in his best work, and there 
is less tendency to distortion of features. Its strength consists in the com- 
pactness of its composition and in a utilization of every part of the canvas 
as an active factor in the total plastic design. There is little tendency 
toward a conventional central mass with balancing features on the sides, 
though there are several areas in the canvas that may be selected as points 
about which the picture organizes, and from which units move rhythmic- 
ally towards adjacent objects, with the production of a series of rhythms 
which vary in size, shape, direction of line, kind of color and degree of 
space. Perspective undergoes the familiar distortion by which distance is 
brought to the top of the canvas, and the background as a whole appears 
as a screen quite close to the main objects in the foreground. It is only 
by divorcing perspective from its associations as representing distance, and 
by looking at it anew as one of the plastic elements to be used in the con- 
struction of plastic design, that we can appreciate the work of the paint- 
ers since Courbet. In this picture, Matisse does not employ the method in 
question exclusively, but uses perspective to a certain extent as an indication 
of actual distance, so that the composite effect is of objects placed both in 
space and one above the other. 

The colors are rendered generally in large flat areas, modulated with light. 
All of these color-forms are placed in contrast with each other and the large 
contrasting elements are always relieved by the interposition of lines, masses 
and other smaller color-areas. For instance, the top of the piano in broad 
color is relieved by a mass—the violin in a case—which in itself is a merging 
of all the plastic elements into a convincing, powerful form. Hence, in addi- 
tion to the color-form made up of broad areas as above noted, there is a 
series of other color-forms made of smaller areas and broken up by the use 
of light and line. It is this inter-relation of the two distinct color-forms just 
mentioned, and rendered in great variety of size, shape and direction, that 
constitutes a very powerful rhythm. The color areas are of different shapes— 
oblong, triangular, square, oval, with an occasional tendency to a rhythmic 
voluminal swirl, as in the foliage of the upper part of the canvas in the centre. 
The different shapes of the color areas involve the use of lines of different 
sizes and directions; consequently, the rhythm consists of line and light in 
combination with color, but it is color which is the dominating element. 
Hence the rhythm is felt primarily as one of color, with the other plastic 
elements clearly perceptible as reinforcements. The distortions of his early 
work are all present here but they have been toned down in the common 
interest of design. The general effect of the picture is of an extraordinarily 
compact composition, a balanced unity of high order. In this painting 
plastic form is attained by the successful organizing influence of color, the 
most difficult of all plastic means to use. 

“Toie de Vivre” is the greatest picture of his early period, but ‘‘La Lecon de 
Musique’”’ is a greater achievement because it reveals command over a more 


508 AUN AGL Y<S BroatO Peeve) els 


varied use of the plastic means. They are both definite creations; in the 
‘‘Joie de Vivre”’ all the means are simple compared to the intricate complexity 
of those in ‘‘La Lecon de Musique.”’ 


PICASSO* 


In one of his earliest paintings, ‘‘The Theatre Scene” (No. 177) there is 
a merging of the influences of Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec with the tendency 
to represent psychological states. The setting, even the manner of applying 
paint, is also reminiscent of both Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec. Part of the 
painting is done with the impressionistic technique of juxtaposition of small 
color-spots, and other parts are in the broad manner of Manet. 

The large picture to which Picasso gave the title ‘‘Composition’”’ (No. 
140) is one of the earliest of his important and characteristic works. It 
shows that fine feeling for the ordered, rhythmic sequence of objects which 
is to be found in most of his best paintings. It reveals also his ability to 
make distortion of objects an effective aid in the achievement of unusual and 
individual designs. A giant with enormous shoulders and arms has a head 
smaller than that of the little girl walking with him. The girl’s waist is 
smaller than an infant’s, although her shoulders are of normal size. The 
moving legs of the two figures could not possibly be in the positions repre- 
sented. All of these distortions form units that enter into formal relations 
with other units in the picture and contribute to the rhythm of line, color, 
space and mass pervading the whole canvas. The distortions and their com- 
positional value are clearly derived from El Greco and are given a setting 
in a color scheme brighter and more varied than is usual with Picasso. The 
painting reveals his originality of conception and his genius in attaining a 
plastic form of individuality and power. 

The influence of El Greco is observable in the painting of the ‘‘ Acrobat” 
(No. 72), in which light and shadow are used in the modelling of the face 
and hands, and in the tendency toward elongation of the individual parts 
of the body. His line also resembles that of El Greco in that it is expressive 
of psychological states and enters into the formation of a particular kind 
of design; but it is less serpentine and writhing than in El Greco, so that 
Picasso’s designs are more simple. 

In the painting of the ‘‘Baby Seated on Chair”’ (No. 128), the influences 
of El Greco are merged with those of Cézanne, so that the general effect is a 
personal form which has strength in spite of its reminiscences of these men. 

The best paintings of Picasso’s Blue Period are those in which the surface 
resemblances to Piero, El Greco and Cézanne are less evident and in which 
he attains more nearly to a form of his own. A characteristic painting of 
this period is that of the ‘‘Girl with Cigarette’? (No. 318). The blue is still 


* All the pictures upon which this discussion is based are in the collection of 
the Barnes Foundation. 


TE way ered @) 5°09 


here, but it has become a series of contrasting blues of various shades. There 
is also a contrast between a reddish-yellow, in an area sufficiently large to 
function as a broad area of color, and the various shades of blue and the 
pasty-white and green of the hands and face. The general effect of the essen- 
tial color-form is reminiscent of Gauguin’s use of broad areas of fairly uniform 
color, and no doubt Gauguin influenced Picasso in this respect. This paint- 
ing shows Picasso’s mastery of design, with distortions of all the elements, 
all of them active in a distinctive design. For instance, the hands depart 
from the normal in color, the fingers look like stiff rods only differentiated 
from each other by tingings of various colors, so that each hand functions 
as a plastic synthesis and not representatively. One elbow and one hand rest 
on a broad area of reddish-yellow which looks like the top of a cafe-table and 
also like a skirt; but it is impossible to say which of the two it is. The face 
is pasty-white, the mouth is an irregular daub of red, the shadows on each 
side of the nostrils are of another shade of red, the shadows under the eyes 
are of a still lighter shade of red, the hair is a mixture of yellow, green and 
dark brown. All these various colors tend to give a distorted, unnatural, 
ghastly look to the face, and the whole head and face represent a new creation. 

The lines outlining the objects are ragged and are varied from a sharply 
incisive character to an exaggeration of the broad line of color which Cézanne 
used to define contours. The drawing of the face, arm, trunk gives a com- 
posite effect of sharp definition of the objects, which make an appealing design 
in contrast with the vague, misty appearance of the whole face. The variety 
and richness of the design is still further enhanced by contrast with the reddish- 
yellow skirt. The trunk is rendered in a series of angular designs, and these 
give the painting its essential strength and appeal. For instance, the fichu 
makes a triangle in definite relation with the triangle of the lapels of the 
waist; another triangle is formed in the left of the picture by the lines of 
the left hand, the lapel and the right shoulder; another triangle is formed 
by the upper left arm and left forearm and the left lapel; another triangle 
is formed by the spot of reddish-yellow between the two arms at the 
bottom; and another area of a general triangular tendency is formed by 
the upper right arm and left forearm and wrist. All the triangles are varied 
in color, direction of line, position, and give an appealing, naive general effect 
of rigidity and angularity. 

The background is varied and made interesting by the use of different 
shades of blue, by lines of different size and direction, and by different methods 
of applying the paint—from the rendering of a broad area of uniform color 
to another area in which the general tendency is towards a contrasting lighter 
color made more interesting by white paint in perceptible brush-strokes. 

The painting is a contrast between a series of angular designs which make 
up the figure, placed against a background of patterns of varying colors, lines 
and methods of applying paint. In both the figure and the background all 
the plastic elements are varied in a manner quite personal to Picasso, and in 
both the figure and the background the elements unify into designs in them- 


510 ANALYSES, OP ADDN DLNGS 


selves; these two designs enter into a formal relation with each other to com- 
pose a unified, strong plastic form. The figure is decentred, but in spite of 
that the distribution of elements in the background, middleground and 
foreground satisfy the desire of the eye for balance; yet the general effect 
of the painting is that of a decentred figure which unites the composition 
in a strikingly original manner. 

About 1909 Picasso’s interest in sculptural forms began to be paramount 
and his tendency more and more away from naturalistic reproduction, toward 
the rendering of abstract forms. His series of still-lifes, at this period, show 
solid objects in such close proximity that several objects together function 
as a single mass of definite compositional value. His former suave, curved 
lines have now become sharp and heavy and the objects which they out- 
line become decidedly angular and block-like. In the ‘‘Still-Life’’ (No. 87), 
a glass, a pear and a pickle are placed one against the other, so that there 
is an angular block-like mass which functions as a unit in the composition. 
His color has changed from the bright blues, pinks and yellows of his previous 
work, to a sombre combination of slate, dull green and dull brownish-red. 
The angular and block-like effects, combined with the new color-scheme, 
produce a plastic form which served as the point of departure for his next 
important period, that of cubism. 

The water-color ‘‘Still Life’? (No. 69) seems to indicate that cubism is 
a combination of the influences of negro art and certain Cézanne surface 
effects. In this water-color, which is a mass of quite brilliant blues, reds, 
yellows, browns, in many variations, the massive sculptural effect obtained 
by the juxtaposition of two masses of different size, is shown in the basket 
of fruit and the jar immediately in front of it. The angular areas of color 
defined by broad ragged lines of demarcation, which give the distinctive 
note to the Cézanne ‘‘Landscape”’ (No. 89), are perceptible in this Picasso 
water-color in the areas to the immediate right and left of the basket of 
fruit and jar. The effect is that of a series of color areas which enter into 
harmonious relations with each other through the reinforcing effect of the 
heavy broad lines which separate the areas of color. It forms a design of 
considerable aesthetic power and represents another step towards Picasso’s 
achievement of abstract design; that is, the realistic interest is minimized 
and realistic features are so distorted as to contribute toward the realization 
of abstract form. 

In ‘‘Still-Life’’ (No. 673), various objects have been resolved into their 
component parts and those parts placed in relation with each other in such 
a way that there emerges a new form of powerful aesthetic appeal. There 
is so little literal representation of objects that it is impossible to say defi- 
nitely what the objects are; but there is sufficient indication to enable one 
to select these apparently meaningless and disparate elements and organize 
them with one’s experience with the real world. This does not mean that 
conscious naturalistic interpretation is necessary to an aesthetic appreciation 
of the painting; it means that by the constructive use of the imagination, 


PAS Gln 511 


aided by suggestions from the real world, the sense of bewilderment and 
strangeness is supplanted by a sense of familiar subject-matter due to the 
whole of our funded experience. And this use of the imagination is a posi- 
tive reinforcement of the appreciation of the abstract plastic form. It is 
only when the parts of the objects disorganized are treated in terms of color, 
space, line and mass, which have formal relations of their own, that the 
cubist painting is entitled to consideration as a work of art. In the picture 
under discussion, we see such use of line, color, mass, space; one gets the 
feeling of planes moving both on the flat surface and in deep space, and 
placed in contrast with each other so that the various planes do function 
as line, light, color, space, for the production of a new form which has its 
own aesthetic appeal. Looked at as a plastic form, pure and simple, with 
no reference to any object with which we are familiar in the external world, 
we see a myriad of relations between line, color, space, which result in the 
production of a great number of plastic units. These individual plastic 
units relate themselves to each other into an organic whole which has the 
indispensable qualities of a work of art—that is, unity and variety. The lack 
of appreciation of this painting by anyone who supposes himself to under- 
stand the work of Titian, Velasquez, Cézanne and Renoir, is a proof that 
what the person in question likes in the paintings of those great artists is not 
the art-value, but something else. The only quality in a painting by any 
one of those great artists that entitles it to be considered as a work of art 
is precisely what is contained in this cubist painting by Picasso; that is, the 
relations which line, light, color, mass, space, take to each other when they 
become a new unity, a plastic form. This is not to say that this painting by 
Picasso is as great as a work of art, as one by Titian, Renoir or Cézanne, for 
Picasso is a lesser artist than any of these. It means merely that Picasso 
has created a form which has a positive aesthetic value of its own. 


PASCIN 


Nude (B.F.) (No. 229). In this the whole color-scheme is reminiscent of 
both Renoir and Cézanne: the quality, delicacy and pastel-like feeling of the 
color has its parallel in some of Renoir’s works, as has also the drawing of the 
arms, legs and chest of the figure. The drawing and modelling of the face is 
much in the manner of Cézanne, and the color-areas in the back part of the 
canvas are Pascin’s own adaptation of Renoir’s and Cézanne’s methods of 
obtaining the movement of voluminal masses in deep space. The basket of 
fruit in the upper left-hand corner might pass as a sketch by Cézanne. The 
whole painting has the light, delicate, fluid rhythm of Renoir, with an admix- 
ture of Cézanne’s influence as above noted. Here, as always with Pascin, the 
modelling is only suggestive of three-dimensional solidity, but this is not a 
drawback, because that kind of modelling is required to fit in with Pascin’s 
general lightness and delicacy. 


512 ASN AIA cE oe Ul bes ee ACT ING Le lotr 


Nude (B.F.) (No. 182). The use of color, line, and space, which gives the 
nude its identity as a plastic form, is repeated in the adjoining table, the wall 
at the back and the bureau at the right of the canvas. All of the objects upon 
the table and the bureau are repetitions of the rhythmic units of color, line and 
space that are found in the nude, the table and the bureau. His capacity to 
diversify these units by the varied adaptations of color, line, light, modelling, 
etc., shows great ingenuity and originality. The units are similar only as 
plastic forms of the same general feeling, but differ in all of their con- 
stituent elements. The same statement is true of the units in picture No. 
629, which also represents a nude. The whole treatment of the two paintings 
is different: character of subject, room, objects. 


IV 


LIST OF PAINTINGS 


THE following list includes the names of all pictures discussed 
or analyzed in this book, with the exception of those belonging 
to the Barnes Foundation Collection. Pictures mentioned but 
not listed are therefore to be understood as belonging to that 


collection: 
Albertinelli (1474-1515) 


Andrea del Castagno 
(1410?-1457) 


Andrea del Sarto 
(1486-1531) 

Antonello da Messina 
(1430-1479) 

Giovanni Bellini . 
(1428 or 302-1516) 


Bonington (1802-1828) . 


Botticelli (1444-1510) 


Boucher (1703-1770) 
Brouwer (1605-1638) 
Canaletto (1697-1768) 


Carracci (Agostino) . 
(1557-1602) 


‘‘Christ Appearing to Magdalen,’”’ Louvre, 
Paris 

‘‘Pieta,’’ Andrea del Castagno Museum, Flor- 
ence 

‘“‘St. Eustasius’’ (attributed to the School of 
Andrea del Castagno), Andrea del Cas- 
tagno Museum 

‘“‘The Last Supper,’ Andrea del Castagno 
Museum 

‘‘Madonna of the Harpies,’”’ Uffizi, Florence 


“The Condottiere,’’ Louvre 


‘‘Madonna of the Alberetti,’’ Academy at 
Venice 

‘‘Madonna,” Vestryof Churchof I Frari, Venice 

‘Portrait of a Man,’’ Louvre 

‘*Sacred Conversation,’ Pitti, Florence 

‘“The Housekeeper,’’ Louvre 

“Destruction of Korah and Dathan and 
Abiram,”’ Sistine Chapel, Rome 

‘“Moses Kills the Egyptian,’’ Sistine Chapel 

“Spring,” Uffizi 

‘*The Birth of Venus,’”’ Uffizi 

‘Pastoral,’ Louvre 

‘‘Renaud and Armide,’’ Louvre 

‘‘Landscape, with Tobias and the Angel,” 

National Gallery, London 

‘‘Le Pansement,’’ Louvre 

‘“The Grand Canal, the Salute,’’ Louvre 

‘Le Deluge,’’ Louvre 


514 1 By as 


Carracci (Annibale) . 
(15602-1609) 


Carpaccio (1450-1522) 
Chardin (1699-1779) 


Claude Lorrain (1600-1682) 


Constable (1776-1837) . 


Correggio (1494-1534) 
Cosimo Tura (1420-1495) 


Courbet (1819-1878) 


Coypel (1661-1722) . 
Cranach (1472-1553) 
Daumier (1810-1879) 


Delacroix (1798-1863) 


Domenico Veneziano 
(Working 1438-1461) 

(Unknown) Fleming 

Fra Angelico (1387-1455) 


Fra Filippo Lippi . 
(1406?-1469) 
Fragonard (1732-1806) . 


Franciabigio (1482-1525) 


Gerard David (1464-1523) . 


Ghirlandaio (1449-1494) 
Giorgio (1439-1502) 
Giorgione (1477-1510) 


OFR ye PIASLIN al LNW. 


‘‘Diana and Calisto,’’ Louvre 

‘‘La Chasse,’’ Louvre 

‘“The Apparition of the Virgin to St. Catherine 
and St. Luke,’’ Louvre 

‘‘Dream of St. Ursula,”” Academy at Venice 

‘‘Ustensiles Variés,’’ (No. 101), Louvre 

‘‘Seapiece,’’ Louvre 

‘Seaport at Sunset,’’ Louvre 

‘Village Féte,”’ Louvre 

“Flatford Mill,’ National Gallery 

‘Salisbury Cathedral,’’ National Gallery 

‘“The Hay Wain,” National Gallery 

‘*Danaé,’”’ Borghese, Rome 

‘‘Jupiter and Antiope,’’ Louvre 

‘‘Pieta,’’? Louvre 

“*St. Dominic,” Uffizi 

‘‘La Source,”’ Louvre 

“Tes Demoiselles du Village,” Metropolitan 
Museum, New York City 

‘*The Painter’s Studio,’’ Louvre 

‘‘Esther before Ahasuerus,’’ Louvre 

“Eve,” Uffizi 

‘““Third-class Railway Carriage, 
Collection, New York City 

‘Death of Sardanapalus,’”’ Louvre 

‘‘Les Femmes d’Alger,’’ Louvre 

‘‘Naufrage de Don Juan,’ Louvre 

“Virgin and Child,” Uffizi 


” 


Havemeyer 


‘Portrait of Maria Bonciani,’”’ Uffizi 

‘“‘ Crucifixion,’’ Museum of San Marco, Florence 

‘‘Descent from the Cross,’”’ Museum of San 
Marco 

“Transfiguration” from “Life of Jesus,” 
Museum of San Marco 

‘Virgin Adoring the Child,’ Uffizi 


‘‘Bathers,’’ Louvre 

‘‘Pierrot,’’ Wallace Collection 

““The Vow to Cupid,’’ Louvre 

“Portrait of a Young Man,’’ Louvre 

‘“The Supper at Cana,’’ Louvre 

Frescoes in Santa Maria Novella, Florence 

‘“Rape of Europa,’ Louvre 

‘‘Concert Champétre,’’ Louvre 

‘‘Madonna with St. George and St. Francis,” 
Castelfranco 


LIST OF PAINTINGS 515 


Giotto (1276-1336) 


Goya (1746-1828) 
Greuze (1725-1805) . 
Guardi (1712-1793) . 


Guido Reni (1575-1642) 
Hals (1580?-1666) 


Hooch, Peter de . 
(1629-1677?) 
Ingres (1780-1867) 


Lancret (1690-1743) 


Le Moyne (1688-1737) . 


Leonardo da Vinci 
(1452-1519) 


Assisi Frescoes: 
‘“‘Flight into Egypt”’ 
‘‘Miraculous Production of a Spring of 
Water” 
‘St. Francis and the Birds’”’ 
‘St. Francis Clothing the Poor’”’ 
St. Francis Restores His Apparel to His 
Father’”’ 
‘St. Francis’s Vision of a Palace and 
Weapons” 
‘‘The Dream of St. Francis’”’ 
Padua Frescoes: 
‘Descent from the Cross”’ 
“‘Entombment’”’ 
“Entry into Jerusalem” 
“Flight into Egypt’ 
‘“‘Joachim’s Vision’”’ 
‘Joseph and Mary Returning after Their 
Marriage” 
‘“‘Pieta”’ 
‘‘The Baptism” 
‘Royal Family of Charles IV,’’ Prado, Madrid 
‘“The Village Betrothal,’’ Louvre 
‘The Doge Embarking on the Bucentaur,”’ 
Louvre 
‘*Dejaneira,’’ Louvre 
‘‘La Bohémienne,’’ Louvre 
“Nicolas van Beresteyn,‘’ Louvre 
‘“The Laughing Cavalier,’’ Wallace Collection, 
London 
‘‘Dutch Interior,’’ Louvre 


‘‘Edipus and the Sphinx,’’ Louvre 

‘La Source,’’ Louvre 

“Le Bain Turc,’’ Louvre 

‘Portrait of Madame Riviére,’’ Louvre 
‘* Autumn,’’ Louvre 

‘‘Juno, Iris and Flora,’’ Louvre 
‘‘Annunciation,”’ Uffizi 

‘‘Bacchus,’’ Louvre 

‘‘Mona Lisa,’”’ Louvre 

‘Portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli,’’? Louvre 
‘St. John the Baptist,’’ Louvre 

‘“The Adoration of the Magi,” Uffizi 
**Vierge aux Rochers,’’ Louvre 

*‘Vierge aux Rochers,’’ National Gallery 
‘Virgin and St. Anne,’’ Louvre 


516 LUST 


Pietro Longhi (1702-1785) . 
Lorenzo Lotto (1480-1556) . 
Pietro Lorenzetti 

(Working 1306-1348) 


Edouard Manet (1832-1883) 


Manni (Working 1493-1544) 
Mantegna (1431-1506) . 


Simone Martini (1238-1344) 
Masaccio (1401-1428) 


Memling (1430 or -35 ?-1494) 


Metsu (1630-1667) . 
Michel Angelo (1475-1564) 


Lorenzo Monaco 
(13702-1425?) 

Orcagna (1308?-1368) 

Paolo Veronese (1528-1588) 


Perugino (1446-1523) 


OF TPATLNGIN Gs 


‘Lesson in Dancing,’’ Academy at Venice 
‘Saint Jerome,’’ Louvre 
‘“Scenes from the Life of St. Umilta,’’ Uffizi 


“Birth of St. John the Baptist’? (School 
picture), Louvre 

‘‘Boy with a Sword,’’ Metropolitan Museum 

‘Boy with the Fife,’’ Louvre 

‘‘Dead Christ with Angels,’ Metropolitan 
Museum 

‘Girl with a Parrot,’’ Metropolitan Museum 

“‘Olympia,’’ Louvre 

**Still-Life,’” Metropolitan Museum 

‘‘ Adoration of the Magi,’’ Louvre 

‘“‘Calvary,’’ Louvre 

‘*Parnassus,’’ Louvre 

‘“The Agony in the Garden,”’ National Gallery 

‘“The Ascent to Calvary,’’ Louvre 

“St. Peter Healing the Sick,’’ Church of Santa 
Maria del Carmine, Brancacci Chapel, 
Florence 

“St. Peter Raising Tabitha,’’ Brancacci 
Chapel 

“St. Peter Taking Money from Fish’s Mouth,”’ 
Brancacci Chapel 

“St. Benedict,’’ Uffizi 

Triptych: ‘‘St. Sebastian,’’ ‘‘Resurrection,”’ 

‘‘Ascension,’’ Louvre 

‘Virgin Enthroned with Two Angels,”’ Uffizi 

“Still-Life,’” Louvre 

‘Expulsion from Eden,”’ Sistine Chapel 

‘Last Judgment,’’ Sistine Chapel 

‘Virgin and Child with Four Saints,” Uffizi 


“Coronation of the Virgin,’’ National Gallery 

‘‘Feast in the House of Levi,’’ Academy at 
Venice 

“Flight from Sodom,” Louvre 

‘Jupiter Foudroyant les Crimes,’”’ Louvre 

‘‘Christ Giving the Keys to Peter” (fresco), 
Sistine Chapel 

‘‘Combat of Love and Chastity,’’ Louvre 


Pisa ORD RAUNT ENG S 517 


Piero della Francesca 
(1416?-1492) 


Pisanello (1397 or -99?-1455) 
Pollaiuolo (1432-1498) 


Potter (1625-1654) 
Poussin (1594-1665) 


Raphael (1483-1520) 


36 


“‘Death and Burial of Adam,’’ Church of San 
Francesco, Arezzo 

‘Discovery of the True Cross,’’ Church of San 
Francesco 

“‘Exaltation of the Cross,’’ Church of San 
Francesco 

‘‘Joseph and Holy Family Resting’’ (also 
known as “Nativity’’), National Gallery 

‘“Marriage of St. Catherine’’ (School of Piero), 
Church of San Francesco 

“Reception by Solomon,”’ Church of San Fran- 
cesco 

‘“Rescue of the Cross,’’ Church of San Fran- 
cesco 

‘Portrait of Princess d’Este,’’ Louvre 

‘“The Vision of St. Eustace,’’ National Gallery 

‘“Hercules Crushing Antaeus,”’ Uffizi 

“Hercules Overcoming the Hydra,” Uffizi 

‘‘La Prairie,’’ Louvre 

‘‘Cephalus and Aurora,’’ National Gallery 

‘‘Funeral of Phocion,’’ Louvre 

‘Holy Family,’ Louvre 

“‘Judgment of Solomon,’’ Louvre 

‘‘Le Paradis Terrestre,’’ Louvre 

“‘Les Aveugles de Jérico,’’ Louvre 

“Orfeo and Eurydice,’’ Louvre 

*“Rape of the Sabines,’”’ Louvre 

‘“The Adulteress before Christ,’’ Louvre 

‘“The Arcadian Shepherds,’’ Louvre 

“Triumph of Flora,’’ Louvre 

‘*“Ansidei Madonna,’’ National Gallery 

‘‘Count Baldassare Castiglione,’’ Louvre 

‘‘Entombment,’’ Borghese 

‘“Holy Family of Francis I,’’ Louvre 

‘“‘La Belle Jardiniére,’’ Louvre 

‘‘La Donna Velata,’’ Pitti 

‘‘Madonna del Baldacchino,’’ Pitti 

‘‘Madonna with Blue Diadem,’’ Louvre 

‘Portrait of a Young Man,”’ Louvre 

‘Portrait of Maddalena Doni,” Pitti 

“St. Michael Crushing Satan,’’ Louvre 

‘The Transfiguration,’’ Vatican, Rome 


518 LIST 


Rembrandt (1606-1669) 


Rigaud (1659-1743) . : 
Cosimo Rosselli (1438-1507) 


Th. Rousseau (1812-1867) . 


Rubens (1577-1640) 


Signorelli (1441-1523) 


Terborg (1617-1681)  . 
Tintoretto (1518-1594) . 


Titian (14772-1576) . 


OF PPALN DUN GS 


‘‘Hendrickje Stoffels,’’ Louvre 

“Old Man,” Uffizi 

‘Portrait of the Artist,’’ Louvre 

‘“The Man with the Stick,’’ Louvre 

‘’The Old Woman Cutting her Nails,’”’ Metro- 
politan Museum 

‘The Supper at Emmaus,”’ Louvre 

‘’The Unmerciful Servant,’’ Wallace Collection 

‘‘Woman Bathing,’”’ National Gallery 

‘‘Philippe V,”’ Louvre 

‘‘Pharaoh’s Destruction in the Red Sea,” 
Sistine Chapel 

‘‘Edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau towards 
Brdéle,’’ Louvre 

‘‘Autumn, Chateau de Steen,’”’ National Gal- 
lery 

‘Judgment of Paris,’’ National Gallery 

‘“‘Kermesse,’’ Louvre 

‘La Fuite de Loth,’’ Louvre 

‘‘Landscape with a Shepherd,” National Gal- 
lery 

‘Peace and War,” National Gallery 

‘Portrait of Suzanne Fourment,” Louvre 

‘“The Baron Henri de Vicq,’”’ Louvre 

‘‘The Four Philosophers,’’ Pitti 

“‘Un Tournoi,’”’ Louvre 

‘* Adoration of the Magi,’’ Louvre 

‘“‘Moses as a Law-giver, Sistine Chapel 

‘‘Concert,’’ Louvre 

‘“‘Crucifixion,’’? Academy at Venice 

“Madonna with Saints,’’ Academy at Venice 

‘Origin of the Milky Way,’’ National Gallery 

‘Paradise,’ Louvre 

‘Portrait of the Artist,’’ Louvre 

‘St. George and the Dragon,”’ National Gallery 

‘‘Suzanne at the Bath,’’ Louvre 

‘Alphonse de Ferrare and Laura di Diante,”’ 
Louvre 

‘‘Bacchus and Ariadne,”’ National Gallery 

‘Christ and Magdalen,’’ National Gallery 

‘Christ Crowned with Thorns,’’ Louvre 

‘‘Entombment,’’ Louvre 

‘Jupiter and Antiope,’’ Louvre 

‘Perseus and Andromeda,” Wallace Collection 

‘Sacred and Profane Love,’’ Borghese 

‘St. John the Baptist,’’ Academy at Venice 

‘The Assumption,” Church of I Frari 

‘The Man with the Glove,” Louvre 

““The Supper at Emmaus,’’ Louvre 


LIST OF PAINTINGS 519 


Turner (1775-1851) . 


Uccello (1397-1475) 


Van Eyck (13857-1441) . 


Van Loo (1705-1765) 


Velasquez (1599-1660) . 


Verkolie (1650-1693) 
Vermeer (1632-1675) 


Verrocchio (1435-1488) . 


Vivarini (Alvise) . 
(1447-1504) 
Watteau (1683-1721) 


‘Calais Pier,’’ National Gallery 

‘‘Dido Building Carthage,’ National Gallery 

‘‘Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus,”’ National Gal- 
lery 

‘The Rout of San Romano,”’ National Gallery 

‘Virgin and Donors,’’ Louvre 

‘‘A Halt Out Hunting,’’ Louvre 

‘‘Don Baltasar Carlos in Infancy,’’ Wallace 
Collection 

‘‘Don Baltasar Carlos in the Riding School,”’ 
Wallace Collection 

“‘Infanta Marguerita,”’ Louvre 

‘Woman with the Fan,’”’ Wallace Collection 

‘‘Interior,’’ Louvre 

‘“The Lacemaker,’’ Louvre 

‘Baptism of Christ, with Two Angels,’ Uffizi 

‘‘Madonna Enthroned, with Saints,’’ Academy 
at Venice 

‘‘Embarkation for Cythera,’’ Louvre 

‘‘Jupiter and Antiope,’’ Louvre 

‘‘La Gamme d’Amour,”’ National Gallery 





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INDEX 


A 


AcApDEmicisM, 40, 43, 93, 207 
and technical proficiency, 22 
in color, 113-114 
in composition, 126 
in space-composition, 135 
Academic Art Criticism, 372-382 
Aesthetic Values of Painting, 34-67 
Albertinelli, ‘‘Christ Appearing to 
Magdalen,’’ 110, 169, 410 
“Anna Karenina,’ 102 
Andrea del Castagno, 116, 151-152, 
168, 169, 171, 193, 242 
“The Last Supper,” 152 
*‘Pieta,’”’ 152, 398 
“St, Eustasius” “‘School), 397 
Andrea del Sarto, 103 
“Madonna of the Harpies,’’ 371 
Antonello da Messina, ‘‘Condottiere,”’ 
208 
Apperception, 31, 32, 33 
and form, 38 
Appreciation, The Problem of, 21-24 
Art and intrinsic values, 25 
and medium, 28, 44 
and subject-matter, 34-36, 44-55 
and Mysticism, 68-70 
Art-criticism, academic, 372-382 
Atmosphere, 108, 109 


B 


BACKGROUND and foreground, 133, 
134, 208, 213 

Background as screen, 151, 152, 157, 
171. See also Impressionism and 
Matisse. 

Barbizon school, 109, 170, 225, 232 

Baroque art, 64, 65 

Beethoven, 44, 49 

Beat. 313 
Ari, 367 


Bellini, Giovanni, 121, 163, 172-173 
altar-piece in I Frari church, 420 
‘‘Madonna of the Alberetti,’’ 420 
‘Portrait of Man,’’ 208 
“Sacred Conversation,’’ 419 

Bellows, G., 303 

Berenson, B., 114, 148, 170, 374-380 
North Italian Painters of the Renais- 

sance, 376 

Berlioz, 90 

Bocklin, 70 

Bolognese school, 44 

Bonington, 207 
‘“The Housekeeper,’’ 215 

Bonnard, 290 
‘“‘Lamp-lighted Interior,’’ 499 

Bosanquet, B., 71, 206 
Three Lectures on Aesthetics, 375 

Bosch, 217, 222, 272 

Botticelli, 64, 116, 161, 162, 168, 169, 

171, 243, 369 

“The Birth of Venus,” 
404 

“Destruction of Korah and Dathan 
and Abiram,’’ 403 

‘‘Moses Kills the Egyptian,’”’ 162, 
403 

“‘Spring,”’ 64, 162, 404 

Boucher, 123, 196-197 
‘‘Pastoral,”’ 454 
‘‘Renaud and Armide,” 453 

Braque, 311, 313 

Brouwer, 207, 229 
‘‘Le Pansement,”’ 452 

Buermeyer, L., 52, 53 
The Aesthetic Experience, 28, 68, 381 

Byzantine painting, 139, 145 


64, 121, 162, 


CANALETTO, 185 
“The Grand Canal, the Salute,” 
438 


524 


Carracci, The, 
“Apparition of the Virgin to St. 
Catherine and St. Luke,”’ 440 
“Le Deluge,’’ 440 
“‘La Chasse,” 440 
“Diana and Calisto,” 440 
Caravaggio, 205 
Carpaccio, 121, 173-174, 188, 226 
‘‘Dream of St. Ursula,’’ 174, 421 
Cézanne, 31, 41, 42, 43, 53, 58, 70, 92, 
94, 95, 106, 125, 150, 171, 201, 220, 
249, 251, 252, 275-280, 284, 308, 
309,312N81441316) 32195250527; 
336, 343 
Cézanne’s technique, development 
of, 484-491 
‘Portrait of Madame Cézanne,” 
251, 278, 493 
“Mt. Saint Victoire,” 492 
Still-life,” 496 
Chardin, 123, 198, 207 
‘“‘Ustensiles Variés,’’ 455 
Chasseriau, 221 
Chiaroscuro, 92, 205 
Childe Hassam, 40 
Chinese painting, 309 
Chirico, 359-360 
Chopin, 57 
Cimabue, 115, 140 
Classic art, 64, 65 
Sculpture, 104, 105, 161, 162, 164, 
310, 311 
Classicism, Nineteenth Century 
French, 220, 221 
Claude Lorrain, 40, 41, 70, 105, 109, 
123, 135, 149, 185, 226-227, 229, 
DEOHZ51NIS2 C253 
“‘Seapiece,”’ 461 
“Seaport at Sunset,” 461 
‘Village Féte,” 460 
Color, 79, 80, 106-114, 374, 377 
Academicism i in, 113, 114 
and form, 57 
dryness in, 108 
in composition, 127 
‘juiciness’ in, 108 
structural, 83, 84, 109, 110, 183 
Color-design, 111, 112 
-suffusion, 109, 110, 111 
-glow, 149, 183, 227, 268 
Composition, 80, 126-135 
academicism in, 126 
bilaterally symmetrical, 126 
color in, 127 
light in, 128 
rhythm in, 62 


INDEX 


Constable, 54, 55, 229-231 
‘“‘Flatford Mill,’’ 462 
“The Hay Wain,” 461 
“‘Salisbury Cathedral,’’ 462 
Contemporary Painting, 312-315 
Transition to, 307-311 
Correggio, 104, 185 
“‘Danae,”’ 439 
‘Jupiter and Antiope,”’ 104, 439 
(orote 1LO9N2 25 2252 
Cosimo Tura, 121, 164, 193 
“‘Pieta,”’ 412 
“St. Dominic,” 411 
Courbet, 94, 124, 203, 204, 224-225, 
232, 241,:2617265) 275 
‘“‘Les Demoiselles du Village,’’ 262 
““The Painter’s Studio,” 128, 458 
“La Source,’’ 458 
Coypel, 197 
‘“‘Esther before Ahasuerus,’’ 454 
Cranach, ‘‘Eve,’’ 440 
Cubism, °53,' 311,312; 313; \o14geeee 
326-328, 344, 347. See also 
Picasso. 


D 


DavEY, R., 303 
Davies, A. B., 70, 313 
Daumier, 58, 107, 124, 222-224, 336, 
343 
‘‘Porteur d’Eau,’’ 223 
“Third-class Railway Carriage,’’ 
223 
David, 52, 93, 94, 105, 123, 220 


David, Gerard, ‘“‘The Supper at 
Cana,’’ 445 

Dawn i Modern Painting, The, 139- 
14 


Decoration, 29, 377, 378, 379, 380 
in plastic art, 61-65 
and unity, 29, 30 
and variety, 30 
Degas, 124, 272-274 
Delacroix, 50, 93, 94, 101, 103, 107, 
ie 109, 124, 221-222, 224, 230, 
275 
‘Death of Sardanapalus,” 221 
‘“‘Les Femmes d’Alger,” 457 
‘“‘Naufrage de Don Juan,” 458 
Demuth, C., 352-357 
Denis, Maurice, 289-290 
Derain, 40, 43, 44, 358-359 
Design, 80, 81, 82. See also Plastic 


Form. 
and method, 367-371 


INDEX 


Design and pattern, 80 
development of, in modern painting, 
241-249 
Dewey, J., 367 
Distortion. See also Transition to 
Modern Painting. 
Domenico Veneziano, 
Child,” 398 
Dou, 207 
Drawing, 80, 115-125 
Dryness in color, 108 
Dutch painting, 198, 201 
after Rembrandt, 207 
landscape, 207, 228, 229, 231 


“Virgin and 


E 


EAKINS, T., 300-301 

‘Portrait of Dr. Agnew,’’ 300, 503 
Egyptian sculpture, 65 
Eighteenth Century French school, 

185, 196-198 

“‘Einfiihlung,” the theory of, 375 
‘“‘Eroica’’ Symphony, 44, 49, 50 
Essence and form, 38-40 


F 


Faurg, Elie, 373-374 
Fleming, unknown, ‘‘ Portrait of Maria 
Bonciani,’”’ 443 
Flemish painting, 188-195 
Florentine painting, 59, 148-171, 184 
Foreground and background, 133, 134, 
213 
Form, The Nature of, 37-40 
and apperception, 38 
and color, 57 
and essence, 38-40 
and Matter, 55-61 
and Technique, 40—44 
in real objects, 37, 38 
Fra Angelico, 112, 158-159, 168 
“Crucifixion,’’ 112, 159, 394 
‘‘Descent from the Cross,’’ 393 
“Transfiguration,” from the ‘‘Life 
of Jesus,’’ 159, 394 
Fra Filippo Lippi, 116, 152-158, 168, 
171, 242, 323 
“Virgin Adoring the Child,” 134, 
157, 158 
Fragonard, 114, 123, 196, 197 
“Bathers,”’ 455 
“‘Pierrot,’”’ 104 
“The Vow to Cupid,” 454 


525 
‘““Rape of 


( 


Francesco di Giorgio, 
Europa,’’ 133, 162 

Franciabigio, ‘‘Portrait of a Young 
Man,’’ 213 

French Painting from Poussin to 
David, 196-198 

Fry, Roger, 114, | fo 


G 


GAINSBOROUGH, 194, 215 
Garber, D., 40 
pores 54, 55, 255, 284-289, 310, 
16 
Genre-painting, 198, 207 
Ghirlandaio, 168 
Frescoes in Santa Maria Novella 
church, 412 
eee: 121, 174-175, 206, 226, 268, 
270 


“Concert Champétre,’’ 127, 
175, 372, 424 
‘‘Madonna with St. George and St. 
Francis,”’ 126, 175, 422 
Giotto, 103, 106, 110, 114, 115, 116, 
135, 140-147, 148, 149, 168, 169, 
170, 174, 181, 226, 241, 242, 271, 
281 
Frescoes at Assisi, 127, 383-390 
“The Dream of St. Francis,’’ 389 
“St. Francis and the Birds,’’ 390 
‘St. Francis Clothing the Poor,” 
390 
‘St. Francis Restores His Apparel 
to his Father,’’ 389 
‘St. Francis’s Vision of a Palace 
and Weapons,”’ 390 
Frescoes at Padua, 391-392 
‘““The Baptism,’’ 392 
‘‘Descent from the Cross,’ 392 
‘Joseph and Mary Returning 
after Their Marriage,’ 391 
Giulio Romano, 60, 113 
Glackens, W. J., 50, 292-297, 500- 
502 
Goya, 50, 215, 216-219, 221, 265 
“Family of King Charles IV,”’ 217 
‘*Portrait of Dr. Galos,”’ 217, 456 
Greco, El, 65, 70, 103, 109, 123, 181, 
weet 185, 199-201, 216, 242, 244, 
215 
Greek sculpture, 171. 
Sculpture. 
Greuze, ‘‘ Village Betrothal,’’ 454 


135, 


See also Classic 


526 


Guardi, 185 
“The Doge Embarking on the 
Bucentaur,’’ 438 
Guido Reni, 60, 91, 103, 113 
‘“‘Dejaneira,’’ 91, 439 


H 


Hats, 214, 263, 301 
‘‘La Bohémienne,”’ 455 
‘The Laughing Cavalier,’’ 214, 456 
“Nicolas Van Beresteyn,’’ 214 
Henri, R., 40, 300, 302-303 
Hindu art, 309, 314, 323 
Hobbema, 207, 228-229 
Hooch, Peter de, 207 
‘Dutch Interior,” 452 


I 


ILLUSTRATION, 377, 378, 379 
Impressionism, 51, 53, 94, 108, 109, 
151, 170, 171, 249, 250-256, 261, 
307, 308 
Impressionist Tradition in America, 
291-299 
Ingres, 110, 115, 123, 124, 146, 171, 
217, 220-221, 267 
‘‘Edipus and the Sphinx,” 457 
‘“‘Portrait of Madame Riviére,’’ 457 
‘‘La Source,’’ 457 
Interest, 25, 26 
and instinct, 26 
and reality, 90 


J 


JAMEs, W., 314, 373 

Japanese painting, 40, 229, 309, 323 

Johnson Collection, the, 381 

Jordaens, 194 

“Joseph' and Holy Family Resting’’ 
(also known as “‘Nativity’’), 402 

‘‘Juiciness’’ in color, 108 


K 
KISLING, 351-352 


L 


LANCRET, 197-198 
‘* Autumn,” 454 


INDEX 


Landscape, 41-42, 226-237 
Dutch, 207, 228, 229 
Langfeld, H. S., 375 
Lawrence, 215 
Lawson, E., 291-292 
Le Moyne,‘ Juno, Iris and Flora,” 453 
Leonardo, 59, 60, 107, 108, 109, 110, 
112, 121, 161, 162-164, 166, 167, 
168, 169, 170, 171, 173, 226, 243, 
244, 311, 368 
‘“‘ Adoration of the Magi,’ 163 
‘‘Annunciation”’ (Uffizi), 163, 405 
“Bacchus,” 112, 163, 226, 405 
** Mona) Lisa,’ 1121211 6a eee, 
368, 406 
“Portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli,’ 406 
‘“‘St. John the Baptist,’’ 163 
ie Mes aux Rochers,’’ 107, 163, 
0 
“The Virgin and St. Anne,” 128 
Le Sueur, 114, 196 
Light, 84 
and composition, 128 
and shadow 84 
Line. See Drawing. 
Lipchitz, 311 
Liszt, 57, 90 
Longhi, Pietro, 185 
‘‘Lesson in Dancing,’ 438 
Lorenzetti, Pietro, ‘‘Scenes from the 
Life of St. Umilta,’’ 392 
(school of) ‘‘ Birth of John the Bap- 
tist,”’ 392 
Lotiron, 357-358 
Lotto, Lorenzo, ‘‘St. Jerome,” 437 
Luini, 101, 103 
Luks, G., 301-302 
“The Blue Churn,” 301, 503 


M 


‘“ MADAME Bovary,’’ 102 
Manet, 42, 50, 51, 52, 53, 73, 124, 133, 
203, 241, 261-264, 300, 307 
‘Boy with a Sword,” 261 
“Boy with the Fife,’”’ 263 
‘Dead Christ with Angels,’’ 262 
‘Girl with a Parrot,” 262, 263 
“Olympia,’’ 244, 262, 459 
‘Still-life,’ 263 
Manet Tradition in America, The, 
300-303 
Manni, ‘“‘ The Adoration of the Magi,” 
392 


INDEX 


Mantegna, 101, 105, 113, 161, 220, 226 
ius Agony in the Garden,” 113, 
41 
“Calvary,” 418 
‘“‘Parnassus,’’ 418 
Maratti color-system, the, 302 
Masaccio, 109, 116, 148-150, 168, 170, 
243,250, 312 
ao in Brancacci chapel, 394— 
39 
“*St. Peter Healing the Sick,” 149, 
396 
“St. Peter Taking Money from 
Fish’s Mouth,’’ 396 
Mather, F. J., 114, 370, 372 
History of Italian Painting, 372 
Matisse, 151, 290, 311, 314, 316-324, 
504-508 
‘Joie de Vivre,”’ 322, 505, 507 
oe Legon de Musique,’’ 323, 506, 
8 
Matter and form, 55-61 
Maupassant, 42 
Medium of art, the, 28, 44 
Meissonier, 73 
Menmling, ‘‘St. Benedict,’’ 444 
Triptych, ‘‘St. Sebastian, Resurrec- 
tion, Ascension,’’ 444 
“Virgin Enthroned with Two 
Angels,” 444 
Meredith, George, The Egotst, 66 
Method and Design, 367-371 
Metsu, 207, 301 
“*Still-life,’’ 452 
Michel Angelo, 65, 103, 105, 121, 161, 
162, 164-166, 168, 169, 171, 184, 
222, 224, 275 
‘“‘Expulsion from Eden,” 406 
“Last Judgment,”’ 165 
“Moses,” 65 
Millet, 103, 232-237 
Milton, 42 
Miniatures, Persian, 139 
Modelling, 83, 109, 110, 114 
Modigliani, 311, 346-348 
“‘La Jolie Menagére,’’ 347 
“Portrait of the Red-headed 
Woman,”’ 347 
Monaco, Lorenzo, 107, 158 
“Virgin and Child with Four 
Saints,’’ 393 
Monet, 40, 124, 230, 249, 251-252, 314 
‘‘The House Boat,’ 463 
“Portrait of Madame Monet Em- 
broidering,’’ 251, 464 
“Portrait of M. Cogneret,”’ 464 


527 


Monticelli, 108, 207 

Mosaics, 115, 139 

Movement. See Drawing. 

Mozart, 44, 49 

Mullen, M., An Approach to Art, 24, 

15 ES SE} 

Murillo, 101, 103 

Music, ‘‘absolute,”’ 44, 49 
form and matter in, 57 
narrative in, 44—50 

Mysticism in art, 68-70 


N 


“Nativity” (also known as ‘Joseph 
and Holy Family Resting’), 402 

Nature and art, 35, 36. See also The 
Transition to Modern Painting 
and The Transition to Contem- 
porary Painting. 

of Form, the, 37-40 

Negro sculpture, 134, 310, 311, 326, 

335, 346 


O 


OrcacGna, ‘Coronation of the Virgin,’’ 
393 
Overture, ‘1812,’ 49 


Pp 
PAINTING as photography, 21. See 
also Nature and Art. 
as narrative, 22 
Palma Vecchio, 113, 185 
Paolo Veronese, 183, 187, 193, 206 
‘‘Feast in the House of Levi,’’ 437 
“Flight from Sodom,” 103, 437 
‘‘Jupiter Foudroyant les Crimes,’’ 
103, 437 
Particular Arts, The, 28-33 
Pascin, 50, 343-345 
“Nude,” 511 
““Nude,’’ 512 
Pater, Walter, 164 
Pattern and design, 
Cubism. 
Paxton, W. M., 139 
Peales, The, 216 
Persian painting, 139, 309, 314, 322, 
a5 


80. See also 


Perspective, 80, 83, 134. See also 
Fra Filippo Lippi, Uccello, Im- 
pressionism and Matisse. 


528 


Perugino, 91, 108, 112, 167, 226 
‘‘Combat of Love and Chastity,’ 412 


INDEX 


Q 


Picasso, 150, 171, 311, 313, 314, 325—| Qua.ity in Painting, 65, 67 


333, 508-511 
‘‘Composition,’’ 325, 508 
“Girl with Cigarette,’’ 326, 508 
Piero della Francesca, 107, 111, 116, 
148, 159-161, 168, 169, 171, 184, 
226,281, 325 
“Death and Burial of Adam,”’ 401 
‘Discovery of the True Cross,’’ 400 
‘‘Exaltation of the Cross,’ 401 
“Nativity,” also known as ‘‘Joseph 
and Holy Family Resting,” 402 
“Reception by Solomon,”’ 399 
‘““Rescue of the Cross,’’ 400 
(School of Piero) ‘‘ Marriage of St. 
Catherine,’’ 402 
Pisanello, ‘‘Portrait of the Princess 
d’Este,’’ 134 
“The Vision of St. Eustace,’’ 393 
Pissarro, 43, 241, 255, 275 
“‘Garden with Houses,” 485 
Plastic and Other Values, 44-55 
Art and Decoration, 61-65 
Form, 79-95 
and reality, 83 
and Subject-matter, 96-105 
defective, 89, 90 
unity in, 89, 90, 92 
Pollaiuolo, 164 
‘“‘Hercules Overcoming the Hydra, 
Hercules Crushing Antaeus,” 411 
Pointillism, 255, 256, 298 
Portraiture, 208-215 
English school of, 185 
Post- -impressionists, The, 283-290 
Potter, ‘‘La Prairie,”’ 461 
Poussin, 108, 111, 114, 122435, 70; 
185-187, 282, 368 
““The Arcadian Shepherds,’’ 441 
‘“The Adulteress before Christ,’ 443 
‘Les Aveugles de Jérico,’’ 128, 186, 
441 


‘“‘Cephalus and Aurora,’’ 443 
‘Funeral of Phocion,’’ 135, 187, 443 
‘‘Holy Family,” 441 
‘Judgment of Solomon,”’ 442 
‘“‘Orfeo and Eurydice,’’ 442 
‘‘Le Paradise Terrestre,”’ 443 
““The Rape of the Sabines,” 442 
“The Triumph of Flora,” 442 
Prendergast, M., 161, 298-299, 502 
Pre- Raphaelites, 105 
Problem of Appreciation, 21-24 
Puvis de Chavannes, 108, 281-282 


R 


RAPHAEL, 90, 91, 92, 101, 103, 106, 
108, 112, 113/12 A262 
148, 161, 166-168, 169, 171, 173, 


213 
‘ Ansidei Madonna,”’ 410 
‘La Belle Jardiniére,”’ 66, 113, 407 
‘Count Baldassare Castiglione,’’ 
113 
“‘La Donna Velata,”’ 113, 410 
““Entombment,”’ 167, 409 
“Holy Family of Francis I,’”’ 128, 
406 
‘‘Madonna del Baldacchino,’’ 409 
“‘Madonna with the Blue Diadem,”’ 
113, 410 
‘Portrait of Maddalena Doni,’ 410 
“Portrait of a Young Man,” 213 
te sine Crushing Satan,’’ 167, 
40 
‘“‘Transfiguration,”’ 133, 279, 407 
eee of Painting, The, 77- 
8 


Realism, 94, 95. See also Masaccio, 
Velasquez, Courbet, Manet. 
Reality and interest, 90 
Redfield, E. W., 139 
Rembrandt, 60, 92, 107, 108, 122, 123, 
149, 160, 202, 205-207, 222, 223, 
271, 278, 368 
“‘Hendrickje Stoffels,”’ 92, 134, 206, 
207, 208, 451 
‘““The Man with the Stick,’”’ 214 
“The Old Man,” 92, 207 
“The Old Woman Cutting Her 
Nails,’’ 60, 207 
‘Portrait of the Artist,’ 214 
“The Supper at Emmaus,’’ 452 
‘The Unmerciful Servant,”’ 92, 93, 
133, 207, 369, 450 
‘Woman Bathing,” 451 
Renaissance. See Florentine Painting 
and Venetian Painting. 
Renoir, 51, 58, 59, 60, 92, 84, 125, 204, 
249, 265- Ee 292, 308, 369 
Development of Renoir’s technique, 
469-481 
‘“‘Bathers,’’ 480, 481 
Reynolds, 194, 215, 242 
Rhythm, 62-63, 81 


INDEX 


Rhythm in composition, 63 
Rigaud, ‘‘ Philippe IV,” 455 
Roman Sculpture. See Classic Sculp- 
ture. 
Romney, 215 
Roots of Art, The, 25-27 
Rosselli, Cosimo, ‘‘ Pharaoh’s Destruc- 
tion in the Red Sea,’’ 133, 418 
Rouault, 350-351 
Rousseau (le Douanier), 315, 349 
Rousseau, Th., 113, 232 
‘““Edge of the Forest of Fontaine- 
bleau towards Brdle.’’ 463 
Rubens, 64, 92, 101, 103, 108, 109, 
122, 169, 185, 188-195, 196, 213, 
nani 222, 227-228, 242, 251, 269, 
270 
“onary Chateau de Steen,’ 228, 
44 
“Baron Henri de Vicq,”’ 134, 213 
“‘The Four Philosophers,”’ 445 
“‘La Fuite de Loth,” 445 
“Judgment of Paris,’’ 228, 249, 446 
‘“‘Kermesse,’’ 445 
“Peace and War,’ 447 
“Portrait of Suzanne Fourment,” 
445 
“Un Tournoi,’’ 445 
Ruysdael, 228 


Ss 


SARGENT, J. S., 300, 308 
Sculpture, Classic, 104, 105, 161, 162, 
16a, 1745310,.311 
Egyptian, 65 
negro, 134, 310, 311, 326 
Sculptural form in the Florentine 
school, 59 
Sebastian del Piombo, 113, 185 
Segonzac, 360 
Seurat, 256 
Seyffert, L., 300 
Signorelli, 121, 164, 183 
‘“‘ Adoration of the Magi,’’ 412 
‘Moses as a Law-giver,’’ 417 
Simone Martini, “‘ Ascent to Calvary,”’ 
113, 392 
Sisley, 253, 291 
Soutine, 112, 284, 309, 311, 334-342 
Space-composition, 80, 82, 89, 133- 
135, 374 
academicism Pep Geter 
Spanish Renaissance, The, 199-204 
Steen, 207 
Structural color, 83, 109, 110 


529 


Stuart, G., 300 

Subject-matter and plastic form, 96- 
105 

legitimate and illegitimate use of, 

49-50 

Sully, 216, 300 

Swinburne, 90 

Symmetrical composition, 126 


T 


TACTILE values, 114, 374, 375, 376 
Terborg, 207 
““Concert,’’ 452 
Tiepolo, 185 
Tintoretto, 72, 103, 109, 122, 169, 
181-182, 193, 199, 208, 213, 221, 
224, 335 
‘“‘Crucifixion,’’ 182, 436 
‘‘Madonna with Child and Saints,’’ 
436 
“Origin of the Milky Way,” 437 
 Maradicer SbiO est iste ise 
436 
“Portrait of the Artist,’’ 181, 213, 
436 
“St. George and the Dragon,” 437 
leet at the Bath,” 181, 182, 
43 
Fitian; 64," 106.108, 109, 115; 121; 
175-181, 186, 193, 201, 226 
‘‘ Alphonse de Ferrare and Laura di 
Diante,”’ 214 
“Assumption,” 66, 133, 176, 181, 
429 
‘‘Bacchus and Ariadne,’ 181, 434 
“Christ and Magdalen,” 175, 435 
‘“‘Christ Crowned with Thorns,’’ 
103, 176, 181, 433 
“‘Entombment,”’ 102, 176, 433 
‘Jupiter and Antiope,’’ 127, 433 
‘‘Man with the Glove,’’ 110, 113, 
128, 134, 176, 208, 213, 214, 432 
*“Perseus and Andromeda,” 435 
ee and Profane Love,” 175, 
43 
“St. John the Baptist,” 176, 434 
ee Supper at Emmaus,” 127, 176, 
432 
Transition to Contemporary Painting, 
The, 307-311 
Transition to Modern Painting, The, 
241-249 
Toulouse-Lautrec, 325 
Tschaikowsky, 49 


539? 


Turner, 101, 109, 231-232 
“Calais Pier,’’ 462 
“Dido Building Carthage,’ 135, 462 
“Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus,’’ 
462 
Two-dimensional painting, 80, 83, 133 


U 


UccELLo, 116, 128, 150-151, 171, 242 
““The Rout of San Romano,” 151 
Unity and decoration, 29, 30 
in plastic form, 84, 89, 90 
Utrillo, 349-350 


V 


VALUE and instinct, 24 
intrinsic, 24 
and art, 25 
Van Dyck, 114, 185, 194, 215, 242 
Van Eyck, 188 
‘Virgin and Donors,’’ 444 
Van Gogh, 283-284, 310, 314, 335 
technique, 498-499 
Van Goyen, 228 
Van Loo, ‘‘A Halt Out Hunting,” 453 
Van Ostade, 207 
Variety and decoration, 30 


INDEX 


Velasquez, 51, 109, 123, 185, 201-204, 
oe 217, 244, 250, 251, 261, 274, 
29 
“Don Baltasar Carlos in Infancy,” 
218, 449 
“Don Baltasar Carlos in the Riding 
School,’ 449 
“Infanta Marguerita,” 208, 447 
‘“The Woman with the Fan,”’ 448 
Venetian painting, 107, 108, 109, 121, 
135, 168, 169, 172-184, 186, 193, 
221, 243, 252, 278 
Verkolie, ‘‘Interior,’’ 452 
Vermeer, 174, 207, 265, 266 
‘““The Lacemaker,’’ 452 
Verrocchio, 163, 164, 166 
“Baptism of Christ, 
Angels,’”’ 404 
Vivarini, ‘‘Madonna Enthroned with 
Saints,’’ 419 


with Two 


WwW 


WATTEAU, 123, 185, 195, 196 
‘‘Embarkation for Cytherea,’’ 453 
“‘Gamme d’Amour,”’ 453 
‘Jupiter and Antiope,’”’ 453 

West, B., 300 

Whistler, 40, 109 





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